


A Life Hard-Lived

by CornishGirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Love, Gen, Hurt Dean, Pre-Series, Young Dean, Young Sam, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-07-18 14:28:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 49,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7318894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CornishGirl/pseuds/CornishGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood were hard on Sam and Dean.  Sam desperately wanted something more than hunting afforded him, while Dean followed their father's lead with a frightening dedication.  Their unorthodox lifestyle has been knit of cases, injuries, illnesses, arguments, family frustrations, and finally a painful schism, all leading to the moment when Sam and Dean, in a darkened house at Stanford, meet one another again after years apart.</p>
<p>A meaty, intense, and complex look at Sam and Dean, including angst, hurt/comfort, multiple POVs as we explore Sam and Dean's development as hunters, and the family dynamic, with a little of John and Bobby stirring the pot.  </p>
<p>(Winner of the Supernatural Monthly Fan Fiction Award)</p>
<p>(Multi-chapter, Pre-Series, COMPLETE)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

He sat upon the hood of the Impala staring blankly into the darkness, into the raw emptiness of a slow-building grief. He'd expended all he had on getting his boys out of the burning house in that first terrible moment of comprehension. His heart denied what his eyes saw, but his gut _knew_. He'd been in battle. He'd taken fire, he'd killed . . . he had learned, in the jungles of Vietnam, to trust what he saw, because lives depended on it.

His sons survived because he trusted what he saw: an explosion of flames as all-encompassing as napalm raining from the skies. His sons survived because he pulled Sammy from his crib, thrust him into Dean's arms.

_"_ _Take your brother outside as fast as you can and don't look back! Now, Dean, go!"_

He'd known it was hopeless when he'd seen Mary. Someone—some _thing_ —had slashed her abdomen, had somehow suspended her from the _ceiling_.

His heart denied it. His eyes, and his gut, knew.

She was lost. Utterly lost.

He could not deny his sons a father when they'd already lost their mother. And so he ran from the house, scooped up Dean and baby Sammy, fled across the street to neighbors who had already called the fire department.

The steel beneath him was warm. As the flames yet billowed from the house, so did heat. John had witnessed a house fire when he was young, remembered standing with others watching the firefighters battle the flames. But this was different. This was _incendiary_ heat, not merely wood burning down. The nursery was gone.

Sammy, in his arms. Dean snugged tight beside him.

His sons were _motherless_.

He felt hollow and empty, but grief was building. It climbed inexorably from chest to his throat, squatted within it, threatened to choke him. Threatened to explode from him in wracking sobs, in tears, in a harrowing wail of denial and disbelief.

He'd seen men, friends, killed in Vietnam. That was a bitter grief, but that, too, was war. This was . . . this was hell of a different sort.

Not just a fire. Not a 'tragic house fire,' as news reports would claim it. Not when he knew what he'd seen.

He trusted himself as he trusted no man. You learned that in war. Trust first in yourself, in order to survive. Because men performed heroic deeds to save one another in battle, but men were also terrified, and survival of the _self_ was paramount, always.

He was ten years removed from Vietnam, but you don't forget war. You don't forget what it does to you, how it remakes you, how it rips your heart out, shreds it, thrusts it back into your body and sends you home again, dead or alive. Even when you're alive, you remember how it felt. You remember trying to live again, to be _normal_ again.

Mary had made him feel normal. Had taught him what it was like to be gentle again, and kind, and tolerant, and loving. She had reminded him of what he'd been before he went to war. Most of all, she made him want to be a good father to his sons, to the two boys she'd carried in her womb.

Dean, his beautiful blond, green-eyed boy, so very like Mary. And little Sammy, six months old this very night, the night his mother died. Who knew yet what he might be? He had John's dark hair, but as yet was too young to have character in his face, the features of his parents. Sammy might be anything, might be anyone.

Dean, at nearly five, was already on the road to being infinitely _Dean_. He had Mary's tender heart, John knew; he saw it in how he took on the role of big brother, as protector, as if born to it. Hell, he wanted to hold the baby whenever he could. He was changing Sammy's _diapers_. He'd even offered to feed him, though his mother, laughing, explained that Sammy wouldn't be eating the way Dean did, yet, from a bowl, or plate; from a fork or spoon. Mommy would feed him a while longer.

Christ. Mary was _dead_.

He knew what he'd seen. It wasn't right. It wasn't _normal_.

People didn't die pinned to a ceiling. People didn't burst into flames _while_ pinned to a ceiling.

Mary had seen something in the nursery. Something had terrified her.

Sammy, all wrapped up in blankets that smelled of smoke and burning flesh, stirred. John held him more tightly against his chest, cradled him snuggly in the crook of his arm. The other he put out to curve around his eldest, to draw him closer.

He looked down at Dean and saw how the boy's eyes were wide, so very wide, and fixed upon the house. The flames lived in those eyes.

Mary's eyes.

"I'll find it," John promised his sons. Promised _Mary's_ sons. "I'll find what did it. No matter what it takes. No matter how long it takes. No matter what I have to do. Because we're Winchesters, the three of us . . . we are _Winchesters_ , and we never give up. Ever."

Holding Mary's sons, he promised her, too.

_I was a soldier, once. I can be a soldier again._

From across the street, perched upon the Impala, John stared up at the flames in the room where his wife died.

_I can be whatever it takes._

Because that's how you win wars.

How you defeat the enemy.

Be tougher. Harder. Smarter.

_For Mary. For my boys._


	2. Chapter 2

Bobby Singer knew about pain. He understood that there were levels to it, depending on whether it was physical, or emotional. He'd watched his father beat his mother; had suffered beatings himself. That was physical and emotional, but entirely human. Later came the loss of his wife to what wasn't human at all, when she was possessed and he'd ended up killing her because he had no other choice. She was a danger, pure and simple, and people would have died. Then came the years of guilt; but also years of learning about the supernatural, and how to fight it. He'd made something good out of the bad.

Still, there was pain. Physical, absolutely; hunting was a hard life. But also the emotional, because hunting was also a solitary life, and it ripped up your guts something fierce, knowing few others in the world understood what came with the life. How it could beat you all to hell.

Pain. Yeah.

There came a day when he learned something new about pain. He saw it in the depths of John Winchester's dark eyes when he arrived the first time on Bobby's front porch. Saw it in the way the man moved. Heard it in his voice, when he said Missouri Moseley sent him to Pastor Jim Murphy, who in turn sent him to Bobby Singer.

Bobby knew about that.

"I'm sending you someone, " Jim Murphy had said over the phone. "Name's Winchester, John Winchester. A civilian, for the moment. Was a family man: wife and two kids. Boys. One's a year old, the other is five. He's a good man, Bobby, but he's in a bad way. He lost his wife six months ago. Definitely demonic: found her pinned to the ceiling, abdomen slashed, burning like a pyre. Got the kids out, but lost everything when the house burned. He was smart enough to keep the details of what happened from the cops and investigators—told me he thought Child Protective Services might take his boys, thinking he'd lost it if he told them what he'd witnessed-but he knew what he saw. He started sniffing around, made his way to Missouri, and she introduced him to the facts of life. You know her judgment is sound, Bobby. She sent him along to me."

Bobby grunted acknowledgment; Missouri's abilities were infallible, and he trusted her absolutely. If she'd seen fit to tell a civilian about the supernatural, she'd judged him strong enough to accept it. But. "Why are you sendin' him to me?"

"He wants in, Bobby. The life. What Missouri told him didn't back him off. He's an ex-Marine, Vietnam vet . . . all the truth did was make him that much more bent on finding what killed his wife. He and the kids have been here three weeks now—I think he's got what it takes. I think he can handle the life. He's going after this demon regardless, Bobby . . . he's got the instincts, has killed in battle even if it wasn't against the supernatural, and I think it's best we give him the tools. Otherwise he's likely to get himself killed, and these kids'll be orphans. They deserve better."

"I'm not a babysitter, Jim. Of grown men or kids."

"John Winchester doesn't need babysitting. Trust me. As for the kids—well, John's learning to deal with a baby on his own, and the oldest boy is 'way older than his years. You'll see that. I think he lost his childhood the night his mother died. He looks after his baby brother like he's some kind of guard dog, only if Sammy ever fell down the well, Dean wouldn't run off like Lassie to fetch someone. I think he'd jump in, grab the kid by his diaper, and climb back out all on his own."

Bobby snorted. "You sound downright mushy about 'em, Jim. You growin' lady parts?"

Murphy laughed. "Maybe so. But once Dean latches onto you with those eyes, I think you'll see what I mean. And Sammy's a good baby. Doesn't fuss much. John's even got Dean changing his diapers, if you can believe it. I think the kid's better at it than his father. Look, Bobby—you're the best source for the lore we've got. Winchester's going to go it alone otherwise. I've sent others to you before."

"They didn't have kids, Jim. He's got no place thinkin' about becomin' a hunter when he's got two young boys. He should stay home, be a civilian, raise those kids normal. Or at the very least, leave 'em with relatives."

"There aren't any. It's John and the boys. He dies, and they'll likely be split up into foster homes. And he's not letting this go." Murphy paused. "Give it a week, Bobby. If by the end of it you think he's a lost cause, tell him so. But give him and his boys that week. They deserve it."

He'd given John Winchester that week, followed by three months, but within a day he knew the man was cut out for the life. In fact, he was the fastest study Bobby'd ever seen. As Jim Murphy had said, John had the instincts, the skills, the smarts, even the obsession. Which everyone needed, were they to survive as hunters.

John's obsession was with finding and destroying the demon who had killed his Mary. It was, in a way, a luxury, Bobby believed, because John Winchester had a goal, had something tangible, something cleaner to work with. Revenge. Bobby didn't have a focus for his rage and grief, didn't have anything to chase for the death of his wife. Because he'd killed her himself. His obsession was to destroy those things that threatened others, so none of them had to kill a loved one.

One night over whiskey in the library, with the boys asleep upstairs in their shared room, John had pulled a photograph out of his wallet. He gazed down at it with a half-smile on his face, contemplating the image, then held it out to Bobby.

"She was so beautiful," he said. "I don't know what she saw in me after I got back from 'Nam, because I was pretty messed up, but I was damn lucky. Luckiest man in the world." Bobby took the photo. He'd heard many men claim their wives were beautiful; sometimes they came close.

He looked at the woman in the photo and discovered that if anything, John understated.

The man's dark eyes were full of pain. "She was a good woman, a damn fine mother . . . and I won't rest until I nail the son of a bitch that took her away from me. From my boys."

Bobby looked into the wide, expressive green eyes of the woman in the photo. But he didn't see her. He saw Dean.

"You sound downright mushy about 'em, Jim. You growin' lady parts?"

Murphy laughed. "Maybe so. But once Dean latches onto you with those eyes, I think you'll see what I mean."

And now, tonight, one year after John Winchester allowed the demon who killed his wife to kill him in order to save his eldest, Bobby sat in his study with John's sons—Mary's sons—seated on his couch side-by-side, beer bottles clasped in hands that always put him in mind of John's, and he realized that Dean, at twenty-eight, looked even more like his mother. All male, no question of femininity, but the features were Mary's. And those eyes . . . well, John had had only to look at his eldest son, and his wife came back to life.

The hunt just concluded had been a hard one, and the boys were tired. After a big home-cooked dinner and a few beers, Sam—my God, but that little baby had grown up damn tall!—appeared to be considering falling asleep right where he was. Dean was equally boneless, but awake. He'd hooked an elbow on the top of the couch back and was stroking fingers across his head as if lost in thought, ruffling short-cropped hair. His eyes were mostly hidden by lowered lids and insanely long lashes.

Bobby thought possibly the boys didn't realize it was one year since their father died. It was easy to lose track of time, as one hunt bled into another. But he recalled it. Maybe they did. Maybe that was why they were so quiet.

Damn, but John should see his boys now. He would be so proud. God knew Bobby was.

Smiling, he rose, fetched a bottle of Jack, poured three glasses, held one out to Dean, one to Sam. They accepted, but were clearly uncertain why whiskey was being bestowed while they held beer in their hands.

Bobby had a thing to say, because he wasn't sure they had ever really understood. Maybe Dean did. Sam, unlikely; he and John had butted heads so many times. "He was—he became—a hard man, your daddy, because he had to. His life changed the same night yours did. But, by God, he loved his wife—and he damn well loved his sons, even if he was bad at showin' it. I never doubted it, not once, and neither should you. Right now, seein' what you've become these last two years . . . well, if he was alive to say so, he'd tell you himself how proud he is of you. And he'd damn sure know he made something good out of the bad."

Sam, so like his father, frowned, while Dean blinked bafflement out of his mother's eyes.

"You, ya idjits." Bobby extended his glass toward the boys. "To John Winchester, toughest son of a bitch I ever knew."


	3. Chapter 3

"Sammy! Sammy, c'mon!"

Dean tried to catch his little brother's arm as he flung himself out of Bobby's house, slamming open the screen door, but nine-year-old Sam was hell-bent on running out, stomping out, departing as loudly as he could so everyone in the entire state of South Dakota—and maybe North Dakota, too—knew Sammy Winchester was pissed off. But all he caught was sleeve, and Sammy managed to wrench it right out of his hand. Dean went out the door after him.

Sammy realized it, and ran. So Dean ran. And since Sam had never yet won a race against his older brother, it took Dean no time at all to catch up to him. But as Sammy spun around even as Dean reached out, he let his arm drop. Sam was marching himself backward, chin thrust out in stubborn anger. The look in his eye dared Dean to touch him, dared him to try and stop him, even though they both knew Dean could. So, Dean simply stopped. Sometimes it wasn't worth it to argue with Sammy. Dean had learned to pick his battles, to realize when "I'm oldest, you have to do what I say" just wouldn't cut it.

Since Dean had stopped, Sam did. Now he stood there in Bobby's yard seemingly irresolute, perched upon a fence between anger and puzzlement.

He came down on the side of anger. "He's leaving again!" Sammy cried. "He's dumping us on Uncle Bobby again, just so he can go off on one of his stupid hunts!"

Dean shrugged. "It's summer. We always come visit Uncle Bobby in the summer."

"And he leaves us here. Every time!"

"Sammy—"

But Sammy wasn't listening. He could be utterly deaf to all voices, all reason, when he wanted to be.

"He could take us fishing, Dean! Or swimming! Or we could go to movies in town. He could play games with us at the kitchen table instead of always cleaning his guns there. He could read a book for a change, a novel, instead of burying his face in Uncle Bobby's stupid lore! He could do anything, Dean, anything other than what he does, what he always does. He could be normal. He could be like other dads."

They were close to the shed where Uncle Bobby painted cars. A rough picnic table crouched beneath the steel overhang in the midst of junked cars. Dean gravitated to it, climbed up, sat atop it with his feet planted on the bench. He fixed his brother with a steady stare, the kind he'd learned often said a lot even with few words attached.

"He's not like other dads," Dean declared, with the hard wisdom born of being thirteen, of living with John Winchester for the last nine years since their mother had died. "He never will be, until he kills the demon."

Sam wandered in a tight circle in the dirt, kicking at a rock and raising dust. "How do we even know there is a demon?"

"Because Dad said so. Dad doesn't lie. Neither does Uncle Bobby, and he said there's a demon out there. Don't you get it, Sammy? He wants to keep us safe. He wants to kill it, before it can kill us."

Sam stopped. "You told me he was a superhero. He's not."

Dean disagreed. "He kinda is. He has a secret identity, doesn't he? A few of 'em, in fact. I looked in his wallet. He's got credit cards in there under a bunch of names. So he's still a superhero."

Sam's eyes got big. "You peeked in Dad's wallet?"

Dean hitched a shoulder. "He left it out. I got curious."

"Why would a stupid old demon want to kills us? We're kids."

Dean scratched the back of his head. "We're Winchesters."

"That's not an answer!"

"Maybe it is. I heard Dad talking to Uncle Bobby, and to Pastor Jim. He thinks maybe that thing 'caught our scent.' That's how he put it. That it knows us. It got Mom, Sammy. Maybe it wants the rest of us, too. So Dad's just doing the best he can to keep us safe, until the demon's dead."

Sam was so skinny Dean sometimes thought he'd look like he was starving the rest of his life. His skinny little arms hung from skinny little shoulders. "Dad gave me a gun last week."

"I know."

"I'm a kid."

Dean frowned at him. "Lots of kids have guns. I went shooting with Dad the first time when I was five or six. So you're slow, Sammy. Behind the times. 'Course you probably couldn't have even held a pistol up when you were that age. Probably would have stretched your arms all the way to the ground."

"What?"

"Because you're such a shrimp, shrimp."

"Am not!"

"Are so! And you have noodle arms and legs!"

Sammy's face got red. "One day I'll be taller than you. Taller than Dad!"

"Not in this world," Dean scoffed. "You're shorter than I was at nine. I could break you in half with one arm tied behind my back. Wanna see?"

Sam clearly did not. He changed to subject. "He's still mean. Dad. He's still stupid."

Dean sighed prodigiously, letting Sammy know his opinion.

"Well, he is!" Sam insisted. "He just dumps us here like, like . . . like we're some kind of trash. Like ratty old clothes he doesn't want anymore."

Dean scrambled off the table, grabbed hold of Sammy's arm. "Don't say that! Don't say that, Sammy. It's not true. He loves us—"

"He hates us! I know he does, Dean!"

Dean shook his arm. "No you don't. No you don't."

"I know—"

"You don't know anything." Dean released his brother's arm as if he meant to throw it away. "You don't know anything, Sammy. You were just a baby. Dad cried, Sammy! He'd put you to bed, and he'd stand there crying, telling you how much he loved you."

"When?"

Dean shrugged, uncomfortable now that he'd told the secret he meant never to tell. "You were a baby. We were at Pastor Jim's."

"I don't remember that."

"You were a baby, Sammy. All you did was piss and poop in your diapers. But I remember." He stood there a moment, blind to everything but memory. Then he looked into his brother's startled eyes. "I remember Mom. I remember Dad from before. A little. He was different."

Sammy did not; was fixed on the here and now. "He's mean."

"You mean when he bites your head off because you stand up right in his face and tell him how you hate him? That's mean? Maybe he's just giving you a taste of your own medicine!"

Sammy was astonished. "I'm not mean!"

"You say mean things, sometimes."

"I do not—"

"You've told him you hate him. To his face. In front of me, in front of Uncle Bobby. You're a kid, Sammy. He's our dad. Is he supposed to just let you say that to his face?"

The tears were sudden. "I just want to do what other kids do. I just want to be like everyone else."

Dean hated the tears, because they made him ache inside his chest. "We can't be like everyone else, Sammy."

"Why not?"

"Because we just aren't. It's different . . . it just changed, for us. You know?" And in his head he thought about how Dad had told him that it was a war, that he was a soldier, like he'd been before. That his sons would be, too.

"Then I want it back the way it was!"

Dean shook his head. "It can't ever be the way it was, Sammy. Mom's dead. And you don't know what it was like, anyway. You were really little when she died."

"I know what other kids have. I know what Jenny Lewis has."

Dean frowned. "Who?"

"Jenny Lewis. From school. Her mother died. It's just her and her brother and her father. But their Grandma lives next door and comes over every day after school when their dad's at work. They're normal, Dean, even though Jenny's mom is dead."

"All's we got is Dad," Dean said. "We got no one else, Sammy. It can't ever be normal for us. Dad's the best we got." _It's a war, son. One we've got to win, or your mother will have died for nothing. So will others, if I don't kill this thing_. "Maybe you need to wake up and see that, Sammy, instead of always arguing."

Sam was angry again. "Then maybe we should be adopted!"

It was such a shock that Dean felt his knees wobble. "What?"

"Maybe we should be adopted. Live with another family. Then Dad could go off and chase this stupid demon and never think about us again, and we could be normal, with a normal mom and dad!"

Dean felt devastation roll over him in a wave. "You want to leave me and live with someone else?"

Sam blinked at him, his mouth open and rounded in shock. "What? No. No, I don't want to leave you, Dean! We'd both go. We'd both be adopted."

"We can't leave Dad!"

"I could."

"Sammy, you don't mean that!"

"I could, Dean."

Dean felt the emptiness in his belly, the sting of tears in his eyes. "You would do that to Dad? You'd do that to me?"

"Dad doesn't need us. But I'd never leave you, Dean. We can go together."

"No," Dean said blankly. "No, I won't do it. And neither will you. Not you, Sammy. I won't let you. Dad won't let you. You're just a kid. You're only nine. You can't be adopted if you've got a parent who wants you."

Sammy wanted to argue more. Dean could see it. But instead his face settled into the stubborn resolution that defied both older brother and father. "Nine more years."

"Nine more years?" Dean echoed blankly.

"Nine more years, and I'll be eighteen. And then I can do whatever I want. If I want to leave, I'll leave. Because in nine years I can go wherever I want, be whatever I want, do whatever I want. And no one can stop me."

Dean twisted his mouth into a smile that wasn't one, really. It was just something he had to do before his face broke. Before he cried. "You'll never leave, Sammy."

His brother said, "Watch me."

And then Sammy stomped by him, raising dust again, and Dean watched him go.

Thinking, I don't want you to leave.

And, Don't leave me, Sammy.


	4. Chapter 4

They'd left him behind again. Of course. They almost always left him behind. Dean and Dad, conspiring: _Leave Sammy behind. He's no good to us. He doesn't want to be here. He'd just hold us back._

The truth of it was, Sam _didn't_ want to go with them. Sam didn't want anything to do with hunting. But he'd finally arrived at the conclusion that no matter what he said, Dad was going to do it. Dad, he knew, was _obsessed_. And it drove him crazy, sometimes, that the man could just walk away from his kids to hunt the big bads, as Dean called them. But it got worse, much worse, when Dean started going. When Dean went off with Dad to hunt the big bads. Because Dean was still a kid.

And yet he wasn't. Dean hadn't been a kid for a long time, and Sam knew it. It took Baby Brother a long time to really _look_ at Big Brother and see what Dean was all about, because for all of his life he'd thought about _himself_ , mostly, because he _was_ the baby; because they treated him like the baby, leaving him out of conversations, shrugging off his questions, telling him he'd be told more when he was older.

He was older now. He was thirteen. And now he looked at the world beyond his outstretched hand, beyond his hungry heart, and he used his eyes and his brain and he realized, one day, that his brother was growing up. That his brother was almost a man.

That Dean, as Big Brother, on the cusp of manhood since he was Sammy's age—heck, maybe he'd crossed that cusp the night that Mom _died_ —had totally bought into Dad's brand of bullpucky.

Sam, sitting at the beat-up motel table in the beat-up motel room in the squalid little dump of a motel in a rusted-out town that, as far as Sam knew, maybe had no name, because he didn't remember seeing the sign announcing it as they crossed the city limits, felt the tautness in his chest and the clenching of his belly.

Suddenly he didn't want to read his textbook, didn't want to do his homework, because what did it matter anyway? They were between schools because Dad had moved them on down the road. Dean had lost half a year because now that he was hunting, he had little time for schoolwork, and sometimes he got hurt and missed class. But he insisted that Sam keep up with his classes; that Sam keep reading his textbooks, completing problems in his workbooks, even if they'd left that school.

Dad had approved. That had surprised Sam. Dad backed Dean up, said that Sam should keep reading the books and working the problems even if he wasn't attending that school anymore, because he'd be attending another one soon and if he fell behind, it would be hard to make up.

He didn't know if Dean would ever make it up, Sam didn't. But Dean said it didn't matter.

_'_ _I'm a hunter,'_ Dean told him. _'I'm like Dad.'_

Sam insisted at once that Dean was nothing like Dad, nothing at all like Dad, and stuck to that certainty until he realized that his vehemence somehow hurt Dean's feelings, even though Dean tried not to show it. And that was the day Sam realized that Dean wasn't acting like Dad more and more because he had no choice, but because he _wanted_ to be like Dad.

He would never be Dad. And Sam didn't want him to be.

In fact, Sam would have preferred that _Dean_ be his father even if he only was four years older. Because even though Dean could be strict, he wasn't mean. He bossed Sam around, but he listened to him, too. And he knew about feelings that Dad didn't know, or refused to know, because Dean, even when he bit Sam's head off over something, always came back around later and said something, or did something, that made Sam feel better. It might not be an actual apology, but that's what Dean meant, and Sam knew it.

Dean told him once that he was just being a stupid kid, that he was too young to understand that grownups got themselves in jams, too, and while it was easy for kids to blame them for things, it wasn't always their fault. That it wasn't Dad's fault that Mom got killed, that the house burned, that a demon was chasing them and Dad had sworn to kill it before it killed them. Dad was _protecting_ them, even if Sam couldn't - or wouldn't - see it. Dad was trying to avenge the death of his wife, and protect his boys, and protect other people, too.

_'_ _Dad's a hero,'_ Dean said. _'You're just too blind, too selfish, to see it. And if the demon never gets you because Dad kills_ _ **it**_ _before it kills_ _ **you**_ _, and you grow up to become a man, maybe someday you'll understand.'_

Sam didn't see it that way. And he didn't know why Dean did.

Someone knocked on the door. It wasn't much of a knock. Sam thought maybe a woman would call out " _Housekeeping"_ even though the DO NOT DISTURB sign was hung on the doorknob, but the call didn't come.

He got up, went to the door, stood there listening. It couldn't be Dean or Dad, because the rule was that they'd say the password. No one just inserted a key in the lock and walked in, and no one simply opened the door from the inside. Dad had taught them that.

And then a slap against the door. "Sammy!"

He knew the voice. Knew it was Dean. But Dad had drilled into them that they should never, ever assume anything. That demons could possess humans and no one would know. "What's the password, Dean?"

He heard a gulp of laughter on the other side of the door. "You know it's me but you're asking for the password?"

Sam wanted to unlock and snatch open the door. He hated a lot of what Dad insisted they do, but he and Dean were still _alive_ , so he couldn't just ignore what the man taught them.

"What is it?"

"Poughkeepsie?—no, no, that's not it. That's . . . something else. Um, supercalifragilisticexpialidocius."

"That's not even a _word!_ "

"It is, too! Sammy, just open the door."

"What's the _password_ , Dean?"

Another slap against the door. "The password is _'I'm bleeding to death,_ '"

Sam twisted the lock, yanked open the door.

"You little twerp," Dean gasped. "You're not supposed to open the door if the password isn't given."

"You're _bleeding_ , Dean!"

Because he was. Because his big brother stood there right in front of him, shoulder set hard against the doorframe, while a blood-smeared hand was pressed against his ribs.

Sam grabbed his arm, tried to yank him into the room, but Dean sucked in a hissing breath, pulled his arm out of Sam's hands, and walked in with exquisitely careful movements.

Sam looked beyond him. "Where's Dad?"

"Went to get food." Dean peeled off his jacket, dropped it on the bed, passed Sam and went into the bathroom.

Sam followed, watched as his brother lifted the front of his t-shirt as he stood before the mirror. Four bleeding stripes marred the otherwise smooth, pale flesh of his chest.

_"_ _Dean!"_

"I'm okay," Dean snapped. "Not even gonna need stitches."

"I'll get the first aid kit. Go sit down on the bed."

"I'll do it, Sammy."

_"_ _Go sit down on the bed!"_

"Bossy little dweeb," Dean muttered. "You sound almost like Dad."

Sam rounded on him. "Don't you say that. _Don't you say that!"_

"Except Dad doesn't sing soprano. When you gonna get a _real_ voice, Sammy? Or you gonna spend the rest of your life soundin' like a girl?"

Dean was starting to slur his words, Sam realized. All the anger and arguments ran right out of his head. "Sit down on the bed." He tugged at his brother's arm. "C'mon. Just sit down."

Amazingly, Dean did as Sam asked. And he even carefully peeled off his shredded t-shirt before Sam had to ask him, or threaten to cut it off. Probably because he was down to only two shirts these days.

Sam dug into their dad's duffel. Winchesters always carried two first aid kits: one in the Impala, and one for the room. You just never knew, Dad had said.

"I can do it," Dean declared, when Sam brought the kit to the other bed.

" _I_ can do it." Sam opened the kit, began to lay out what he thought they needed. What he'd seen Dad use, and Dean, in similar circumstances.

Alcohol wipes. Antiseptic ointment. Gauze. Tape.

"Go wet a washcloth first," Dean advised. "And wash your dweeby hands, dweeb."

Oh. Yeah. Sam scrubbed up, then grabbed a washcloth, soaked it, wrung it out, brought it back. Before he could do anything with it, Dean took it, began to clean away the blood. Sam saw how the muscles tensed beneath his brother's skin.

"Did you kill it?" Sam asked, to distract Dean.

"Dad did."

"He let you get too close."

"He didn't 'let' me do anything, Sammy. Things happen when you hunt."

"He chewed you out, didn't he? For getting hurt?"

Dean finished cleaning up the blood, pressed the washcloth against the stripes and held it there. "Get ready to swab this. Or just open the packet for me—I'll do it."

"I can do it." Sam tore open the foil, removed a folded wet square. "Okay."

Dean tossed the washcloth aside and Sam swooped in with the wipe. He felt the clenching of Dean's muscles against the assault, heard the hiss of an indrawn breath.

Sam waved a hand immediately in front of the wound, dispersing the dampness of alcohol. "Dad just dropped you off? When you're _hurt_?"

Dean's teeth were gritted. "He didn't know."

Sam was appalled as he uncapped the tube of antiseptic ointment. "How could he not know?"

"Because I didn't tell him, okay?"

"Because you knew he'd chew you out."

Dean's jaw was set. "Just do this, Sammy. You weren't there. You don't know."

"It's Sam." He squeezed ointment into his hand. "I'm not 'Sammy' anymore."

"Since when?"

"Since today."

"What, you just decided this while Dad and I are out putting our asses on the line for you?"

Sam began to spread ointment over each stripe. "You're not putting your asses on the line for me. It's because Dad wants to do it. It's got nothing to do with me."

"Sammy—"

" _Sam._ "

"Sammy-Sam-Dumbhead . . . you're still the same stupid kid. I don't know how you can be so blind about all of this. You're like two of those stupid monkeys."

Sam stared at him. "Monkeys? What monkeys?"

"The ones who put their hands over their eyes, ears, and mouth. Only _you_ leave the hands _off_ your mouth. You can't see, you can't hear, but you sure can shoot the shit." Dean grabbed the tube from Sam's hand, stood up abruptly even though clearly it hurt. He strode into the bathroom. "You're a smart kid, Sammy, but you sure can be an asshole sometimes."

Wide-eyed in shock, Sam stared after his brother. He'd never, ever heard Dean say that word before, let alone call _him_ by it. "Dean—"

But Dean turned, stood in the bathroom doorway. "Don't you get it, Sammy? We're _saving people_ , Dad and me. Every time we kill a monster, we save lives. _Every_ time. So yeah, it means I miss school some days. It means we never stay in one place all that long. It means we spend a lot of time in these dumps. It means you get left behind, because God knows all you'd do is piss and whine if you came along, and it _keeps you safe_ while Dad and I put our asses on the line. I know this isn't what you want to do, Sammy— _Sam_ —but it's what we _have_ to do, Dad and me. Because it matters. It counts. Because whenever we hunt things, we _save_ people. People just like you. But if you want to leave when you're eighteen, like you said—well, then you can leave. And Dad won't be able to stop you, and neither will I. Even—"

And just like that, without finishing his sentence, Dean turned his back on Sam and began to work ointment into the balance of his stripes.

"Even what?" Sam asked.

Dean didn't answer.

"Even _what,_ Dean?"

No answer.

"Dean—"

"Leave it alone, Sammy. _Sam_."

Dean had never sounded like that with him. Never sounded bitter, or hurt. Quietly, he said. " _You_ can call me Sammy. And you can even call me an asshole, if you want. 'Cuz maybe, sometimes, I am."

Dean stood before the mirror with his back to his brother for a long moment. Then he turned, came back into the room. He tossed the tube at Sam, bent to grab gauze pads and tape. Ointment glistened on reddened stripes.

Claws. Dean had been clawed.

_My brother could die._

The lump swelled in his throat. "I don't want you to die."

Dean gave him bitchface. "I'm not going to die."

"But you could. Every time. Whenever you go hunting, you could die."

"Whenever we get up in the morning we can die, you dweeb. Every time we set foot outside a motel room, or climb into the Impala, or eat a meal. Hell, we could choke to death on a sausage, or eat a bad taco. Are we supposed to stop eating?"

Well, being called a dweeb was better than being called an asshole. "No. But I've run a risk assessment, Dean . . . I've done the math. The odds of you dying are significantly higher when you hunt than when you eat."

"You didn't run a risk assessment against eating!"

"Well, not that _specifically_ , but—"

Dean scooped up the stained, damp washcloth he'd dropped to the bed, threw it at his brother and caught Sam in the face. "You think too much!"

Sam pulled the icky washcloth from his lap, where it had fallen. "That's what a brain is for."

Dean sat down, thrust the gauze, tape, and blunted scissors into Sam's hands. "Here. _You_ do it, Florence Nightingale. Give your brain something else to think about besides risk assessment, and math, and odds. Dude, the things that go on inside your head!"

Sam unwrapped the large gauze square, placed it carefully over the stripes, lifted his brother's hand to it. "Hold that while I cut the tape."

Dean did so, as Sam unwound and snipped four lengths.

"Dad really doesn't know you got hurt?"

"No."

"And you didn't tell him?"

"No."

"Because he'd chew you out?"

"Because it doesn't matter."

"Because he'd chew you out."

Dean glared at him. "He might point out the mistake I made, but he wouldn't chew me out."

"Dad would chew you out."

Dean sighed, rolled his eyes.

Sam applied tape to his brother's chest. "You said I sounded like Dad."

"If Dad sang soprano, yeah."

"I don't want to sound like Dad, because Dad can be an asshole." When Dean's eyes went wide, Sam pointed out, "You said it first. But if I _have_ to sound like Dad to make you listen, I will."

Now Dean was wary. "Sound like Dad about what?"

"Don't get hurt," Sam said. "Don't _die_ , Dean. Because I don't want to be here if you're not."

Dean's eyes and voice were steady. "You said you're leaving, Sammy. Sam. When you're eighteen. Maybe I don't want to be here if _you're_ not."

Sam said it, because he knew it to be true. "That's selfish."

"Maybe," Dean said. "Yeah, probably. But that makes two of us."

"I'm selfish because I want to go to college?"

Dean blinked at him in surprise. "College?"

"Maybe." Sam raised his chin. "There's more to life than hunting."

Dean rose, went to his duffel, began to dig through it. "Yeah, maybe. For most people."

"You could do whatever you want to do."

"This _is_ what I want to do."

"This is what _Dad_ wants you to do. So of course it's what you want to do. Because Dad wants it."

Dean pulled a fresh tee out of the duffel, carefully put it on. "You know, you bitch about being left behind. Did you ever stop and think that maybe it's because Dad _knows_ this isn't what you want to do?"

Sam stared at him in surprise.

"He's not an idiot," Dean said, "and neither am I. It's not always because you're a kid. It's because your head isn't in the game, and that's because this isn't the game you want to play." He shrugged. "Fair enough. Maybe you're supposed to be another Einstein. But you sure can be stupid sometimes."

That stung. "I'm not stupid!"

"Then figure it out!" Dean snapped. "Run a risk assessment. Do the math. Dad is trying to keep us alive! And it may not be the way you think it should be done, but until you come up with a better idea, _Einstein_ , it's the best we've got."

"I _do_ have a better idea!"

Dean scowled. "What?"

" _Stop hunting!"_

"Sam—"

"You'll die!" Sam cried. "You'll get yourself killed."

"I won't. I won't die, Sammy."

"You don't know that!"

"I know _this_ ," Dean said. And then he came over, stood just before Sam and put his warm, big hands upon his brother's shoulders. When had Dean gotten so big? "Listen to me, Sammy. Dad would die before he let me die. Dad would sacrifice _himself_ to save my life. And you may not trust him to do that, but _I do_."

Sam surged forward, pressed himself against his big brother and wrapped his arms around him even as Dean grunted in pain. "I don't want you to die. I don't want Dad to die. I don't want _anyone_ to die."

Dean patted him on the head. "We're trying not to, Sammy. That's the point. We don't want anyone to die, either. And every time we kill a monster, we save people. And one day, when Dad kills that demon, maybe you'll remember that he _is_ a superhero."

Against is brother's chest, Sam declared, "He's an asshole."

Dean laughed, and it thrummed against Sam's ear. "Sometimes, yeah. But he's _our_ asshole, Sammy. And don't you forget it. Because otherwise you won't have any excuse for it when _you_ come down with assholery."

Sam lifted his head to peer up at his brother. "What?"

"Well, it's a genetic condition with the Winchesters. Assholery. Since you wanted to be adopted, that means you'd just be an asshole because you _choose_ to be an asshole, not because it's genetic and we can't help it."

Sam unwrapped his arms. "That doesn't make any sense, Dean. It's not Mendelian. Assholery is not a genetic trait."

Dean sighed, patted him on the head again. "Okay, Einstein. Whatever you say. Now, how about you show me your workbook. Let's see if you managed to solve all the equations in the midst of solving the world's problems."

"That's not funny, Dean."

"It's a little funny."

 


	5. Chapter 5

He roused from pain into an inchoate tangle of voices, and argument, and anger.

And a raw, frantic fear.

Dad. Sammy.

Who the hell else?

Did they never stop?

Maybe if he died, they'd stop.

Well. Probably not. They'd just have something new to scream about: How Dean got himself killed.

It wouldn't matter that he'd died. It would matter how he died, and who was responsible.

As he lay there sweating out the pain, incapable of movement because even a twitch of an eyelash would jolt that pain through his body, Dean decided that both of them were assholes.

Genetic. It had to be. John Winchester. Sam Winchester. Dyed-in-the-wool assholes, the both of them.

It would serve them right if he got himself up from the bed, limped out of the motel room and collapsed and died on the sidewalk in front of the Impala.

Except that might only shut them up for maybe two minutes, and then they'd be arguing about what funeral home they should haul his body to, and what cemetery would host the fewest ghosts that might have something to discuss with his newly buried, oh-so-sweet Dean Winchester ass.

They should just burn him. Salt and burn him. Then he couldn't haunt their damn asses, even if he wanted to.

But they'd deserve it if he did.

"Assholes!" he shouted.

Except maybe it wasn't a shout, because neither Dad nor Sam heard it. They just stood on either side of his bed—his deathbed?—and yelled at one another.

Sam accused Dad of trying to get his oldest son killed, which was all kinds of bullshit, because of course Dad wanted no such thing. He needed Dean. He relied on Dean.

Dad, on the other hand, shouted back that Sam could pull his own weight if he really wanted to instead of leaving it all to his brother. Which wasn't fair, because Sam pulled plenty of weight. He was sixteen, and he'd killed his share of monsters. Just like his big brother had at the same age.

Both of them. Winchester assholery. It belonged in medical journals. In Sammy's textbooks.

"Shut up!" he shouted, except he didn't think it actually made it out of his mouth.

His brain, on the other hand, had a lot to say.

Eventually, when he realized they had no plans to stop arguing, he grabbed the pillow behind his head and launched it at them. Except he had no real strength in his arm, and the pillow did little more than flop down beside him once he got it out from under his head. But it was enough to catch their attention.

"Can we make this about me?" he asked. "I mean, about treating me, instead of arguing about me?"

Two sets of startled eyes stared at him. One set chocolate brown, one dark hazel.

"—sick of it," Dean said. "You get me? Sick of it. From both of you. You're both wrong—about certain things. You're both right—about certain things. What you need to do is figure out which things you can agree on, and which things you can't agree on, and let it the fuck go!"

Well. That shut them up.

"I've wasted years listening to the two of you butt heads. Sammy whines, Dad yells. Dad declares, Sammy objects. You don't listen. You never listen. You just bitch. You just bitch at one another, or about one another, and I'm sick of it. I've had it. I don't even know what the problem is—well, that's not true. I know exactly what the problem is . . . you're both too much alike!"

Whereupon Sam claimed he was nothing whatsoever like his father, and their father claimed he wished Sammy was more like him.

"Stop it," Dean said. "I'm the one lying here with his thigh cut open; can you both just listen to me? Dad didn't do this to me. Dad didn't make this happen. Dad didn't throw me to the wolves—though this wasn't about wolves. I wasn't bait, and Dad didn't use me. I just screwed up, okay? That's on me. No one told me to do what I did. I made my own decision. It wasn't a bad decision. I just fell, okay? It's not a criminal offense. If that sucker had killed me, it would still be my fault. Not Dad's because he happened to be there; he wasn't right there when it happened. Not Sam's because he was at the car where Dad told him to be; hey, look at that: Sam followed orders. I made a decision, I made my move, and I screwed up. Okay? I screwed up. I'm not a perfect soldier, and I make mistakes. Dad, you can rip me a new one for that if you want; and Sam, you can claim I'm failing Dad's Manchurian Candidate indoctrination, but the fact is that I went in too hot all on my own, and I tripped, and the monster got me. But it's dead, and that's what matters. Okay? One more monster off the board."

And then he shut up, because his thigh was screaming at him and he thought he might hurl.

Sam disappeared into the bathroom, ran water, came back, placed a cool, damp washcloth across Dean's brow. Meanwhile Dad disappeared for a while longer, even left the room entirely, and when he came back he had a baggie full of ice and placed it carefully atop Dean's bandaged thigh.

"See?" Dean said. "Peace in our time. Hoo-freakin'-ray."

"Dean—" they said at the same time, and glared at one another.

"—'s gotta stop," Dean told them. "This. You're gonna get one another killed. Or me killed. And then I'd be really pissed, and I'll haunt your ass. Asses. Look, I get it, Dad. You expect great things out of me, and I try to give them to you. You expect Sam to fall in line the way I mostly do, but he's not me. You and me, Dad—don't we work to give Sammy as normal a childhood as we can under the circumstances? Don't we want him to finish high school with good grades? Don't we work for that? Yeah—we do! He's a smart kid, and he deserves to use that brain."

"Dean—" Dad began, but his eldest overrode him.

"You, Sam? You need to lighten up. You need to realize that the last thing Dad wants is me dead, and I know it's the last thing you want. Whatever Universal Soldier thing you see in me isn't because of Dad. I'm not programmed, Sam. I could walk away from you both today—well, maybe tomorrow, with this leg—and I'd go out and do exactly what I'm doing now. I'd hunt things, and I'd save people. I don't do it because of Dad. I do it because it's the right thing to do." He swiped at his sweaty forehead. "Sammy—go do what you need to do. Don't be what Dad thinks you should be, what I want you to be. We're full of shit. Just go and do what you want. It's okay. You're still my brother. You're still his son. No matter where you go, or what you do, you'll always be that. You'll always be a Winchester."

"Dean—" Sam began, but his brother cut him off.

"You're both eating me alive. Do you know that? Do you even know how many times I've stepped between you two before punches got thrown? A father shouldn't hit his son, and a son shouldn't hit his father. But I don't want to get hit, either, just because I stepped between you." He attempted to put up a hand, tried to wave it. "I know . . . I know neither of you has ever lifted a hand against one another. But it's coming. If you keep it up, it's coming. And I swear . . . if the day ever comes where one of you throws a punch at the other, I'm out of here. I'm gone."

Father and youngest son stared down at him from either side of the bed, clearly shocked.

Dean felt himself fading. "You got no idea," he murmured, "what it's like. You don't even see that you're on the verge of locking horns . . . d'you even know what that means? That means one of the animals dies. And maybe the other, if he can't eat because he's luggin' around a dead buck or bull. You're my father, and you're my brother, and I love you both—but I've never known two more stubborn people in my life. Thing is, I know you care about one another. You really do. But you gotta stop this. It's gonna get one of us killed. Maybe all of us. We can't . . . we can't afford this. Somethin' bad's gonna happen."

Now father and youngest son stared at one another.

"It's that song," Dean said. "Dad—you probably haven't heard it. It's not classic rock. It's more of Sam's pop shit. But it fits." He swallowed. "'Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right—here I am . . . stuck in the middle with you.'"

"Gerry Rafferty," Sam said promptly, while their father looked blank. "Though it was Stealers Wheel at the time."

Oh, God. Of course Sam would know exactly where, and how, it originated. Dean thought he'd been doing well to remember it at all.

But it was true. He was stuck in the middle.

"You need to figure it out," he said. "You need to go out to a bar together, throw back some whiskey, maybe shoot some pool—and no, I am not going to advise my father and my little brother how to pick up chicks together—and just talk it out."

"There's nothing to talk out," Dad said.

"We're not kids anymore," Dean told him. "We're just not. At my age, Dad, you were killing people in Vietnam. Sam's sixteen—he's damn near that old. If you trust him to kill monsters, you gotta trust him to think for himself. And Sam—" He caught his brother's eye. "I know this isn't what you wanna do. But until you walk away, you gotta do it right, okay?"

"I am doing it right!"

"Keep your head in the game, Sammy. It's the only one we got right now."

He saw as Sam slid a hard glance at Dad. Yeah. It was coming.

I've lost him. He's gone. Give him a couple of years, and he's outta here.

The thing was, he couldn't blame him. Not at all. It just wasn't what Sam wanted to do. As much as Dean wanted this, wanted his brother with him, Sam wanted something else. And it wasn't wrong. It was Sam's life, Sam's decision.

I don't want to lose him. But I've got to let him go.

"It wasn't what you wanted, Dad," he said, and saw John Winchester's startled gaze settle on him again. "This is what you made yourself into because of Mom. But it's not what you'd have chosen. It's not what any of us would have chosen. You can't blame Sammy because he wants something else. Because if life was fair, if Mom had never died, none of us would be doing this. And you know I'm right." He cleared his throat, knew himself on the verge of sliding right over that edge. "Now, you two go on. Get out of here. Go find that bar, or at least go grab dinner. Lemme sleep. The leg's stitched and bandaged, I'm takin' the damn pills, I'm on the verge of goin' comatose, and there's nothing either of you can do for me. So just go on and get out of here, and let me sleep. I don't wanna hear anymore arguments."

"I'm not leaving you," Dad said.

"I'm not going anywhere, " Sam declared.

Dean flapped a hand at them. "Fine. Turn on th' TV. Turn on th' computer. Do whatever you want. Jus' keep your mouths shut for a few hours, while I catch some Zs. Because I'm not up t' playin' referee."

As his eyes slid closed, Dad asked, "Is that really what it feels like to you? That you're playing referee?"

"Wouldna said it oth'wise."

"I'm sorry," Sam said, in that funny choked voice.

Puppy dog eyes, no doubt.

"You're all I got in the world," Dean said. "Don' wanna lose either of you. You know?"

Maybe they did know. Because neither said anything again, and both the TV and computer were turned on, and he let sleep take him away.


	6. Chapter 6

Bobby stepped out onto his porch with two bottles of beer. John and Dean had just left in the Impala, headed for town on a supply run. Sam stayed behind, and now sat hunched over in one of the old rocking chairs Bobby'd set on on his porch back when his wife was alive. They'd sit and rock and talk about the world. He enjoyed doing the same with the Winchesters.

He paused beside the chair, tapped the bottom of a cold bottle against Sam's shoulder. Sam's broadening shoulder. The kid was still only seventeen, but he'd shot up several inches since the summer before.

Sam glanced his surprise at the offer of a beer. Bobby shrugged. "You been killin' monsters a while now, Sam. I figure you're due it—if you want it, that is."

Sam took the beer. "Dad lets me have one now and again. Or Dean does, if Dad's gone."

Bobby dropped into the chair opposite, eyed Sam closely. "Your brother have anything to say about the fact you're taller than him now?"

Sam's engaging smile broke free, along with the dimples. John Winchester's dimples, though John only rarely smiled enough to show them. "He accused me of making a crossroads deal."

"You may end up bein' taller than your daddy, you keep goin' the way you are."

Sam nodded, tipped back his head as he drank. He did not gulp, Bobby noted. He knew how to measure his intake. John and Dean both tended to upend the bottle, take half of it down fast.

John did that a little more often than Bobby thought best, but who was he to complain? He had his own affair going with the whiskey bottle.

Bobby waited. He knew much was going on in the kid's head. There was always something going on in the kid's head. John wore a mask most days; Dean was following in his footsteps, even if, when at Bobby's, or with Sam in John's absence, he let the real Dean show, instead of the construct.

It was something all hunters did. Built walls. Made masks. A matter of self-preservation. Survival.

Sam hadn't built any walls yet. He never wore a mask. The kid was all raw emotion, sometimes so caught up in it Bobby thought he might choke on it. He'd seen it come out in simmering anger and spurts of accusations against his father, in gritted teeth, in a clenched jaw, in stiff posture and movements. And in mute appeals sent to his older brother, as if begging Dean to say something, to get up in John's face.

But Dean didn't do that. Dean stood back, gauged the moment, then attempted to diffuse. But he never accused. He never took sides. He walked the edge of a blade, Bobby thought, trying to be fair, to balance love for father against love of brother, while they butted heads. The Winchester minefield.

"You're supposed to love your father," Sam said.

And there it was.

"In a perfect world," Bobby agreed. "But it ain't perfect, is it?"

"It's just—it's so hard, Bobby."

"Growin' up is, kid. It just is."

There came the merest flicker of resentment. "Dean didn't have any trouble."

"That's because your brother became an adult almost before he had a chance to be a kid. Tragedy'll do that. It does it to a kid, and it damn well does it to a grown man."

Sam wasn't stupid. Sam got the implication. He stared at Bobby a moment, then looked away and drank more beer. "Dean got hurt last year. On a hunt."

"I heard."

"And he said some things. He actually lectured us, me and Dad . . . you should have heard it, Bobby. You know how he doesn't say anything when Dad and I get into it? Or only says what he has to just to back us down? Well, he said plenty that day. He was in pain, and drugged to the gills, and Dad and I were arguing, and he lit into us both."

Bobby's brows rose. That would have been a sight. Fly on the wall time.

"And it made me think, and Dad was real quiet for a few days, but it didn't last. I guess it just can't last with the two of us. Dean hasn't said anything beyond the usual, since. But I see it, sometimes, in his eyes. He says everything with his eyes, you know? He doesn't need to talk." He shrugged. "We're so different, Dean and me . . . it's not fair."

That was interesting. "Why isn't it fair? You're two different people."

"Because he just takes it all in stride. What we do. How Dad is. Dean isn't stupid, though he lets too many people think he is. He's not book-smart, maybe, not the way schools measure smarts, at any rate . . . but he helped me with my homework right from the start. More than Dad ever did."

Bobby grunted. "You ever ask your daddy to help?"

Sam flicked him a puzzled look.

"You ever think maybe that while John was out getting food, or working a real job to bring some bucks in—"

"—or scoring a phoney credit card?"

"—that Dean sat down with you and your homework before your daddy could?" Bobby shook his head. "Sam, I'm not here to tell you John Winchester deserves a Father of the Year award. He's made bucketloads of mistakes in his life, especially with you boys. I told him from the start he needed to find some place to leave you two for longer than a few months, instead of dragging your skinny asses all over Creation in that car. But you were his boys, and he wasn't about to let you go." He paused. "You and Dean are all he has left of Mary. I don't blame him for keepin' you close."

"But you just said you thought he should have left us somewhere."

"Longer than he did, yeah, but I get it. I know it's been hard on you moving so much, changing schools so often. It's no wonder Dean finally gave up and dropped out—"

"It's because of me," Sam interrupted bitterly. "And because of Dad, and because of hunting. He's always had to look after me, because Dad left us alone. He was helping me with my homework and getting behind in his own. And then he acted out, got detention, got demerits, lost credit for some of the work he did, or he got hurt and had to miss school. Because of hunting. Because of Dad's obsession." His eyes were angry when he met Bobby's. "Why did Dad have to make his obsession Dean's?"

"That what you think?" Bobby quirked his brows. "You truly think anyone can make your older brother do somethin' he don't want to do?"

"Dad can. Dad trained him, didn't he? Raised his perfect little soldier?"

"Same man raised you, Sam. I don't see anything of a 'perfect little soldier' in you."

"That's because I don't think the same way. It's because I had the opportunity to make up my own mind."

"And who allowed you to do that, Sam? Who gave you that opportunity?"

Sam was very still, clutching the bottle.

"Tell me this, Sam—do you think you're like all the other kids your age?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because of the hunting."

"Well, kid, hunting's kind of a war, ain't it?"

Sam shrugged. "I guess. Yeah."

"You fight the enemy, and you kill the enemy."

"Yeah."

"And you're one year younger—hell, less than that, now—from your daddy's age when he went off to Vietnam." Bobby knew he had all of Sam's attention now. The kid was listening, not just thinking. "It was a hard, nasty war, Sam, and about as popular back home as a buck-toothed, glasses-wearing, pimple-faced nerd at a prom. John survived hell in the jungle, and came home to being screamed at by people who blamed the vets for the war instead of the government. His dad checked out on him when he was a kid, and his mother died when he was overseas. The only sanity your daddy found was in your mother, when he fell for Mary Campbell. He had five good years, Sam—five good years with a wife he adored and, four years after that, two young sons he loved dearly. And one night a demon stole into the nursery—your nursery, Sam—and murdered his wife in a truly terrible fashion. He came home from a horrible war, found sanity for a few years, then had it all ripped away again. He lost any shot at a normal life that night. So did Dean, so did you. It wasn't fair for any of you. But life just ain't."

Sam's head was down as he stared at the porch planks. He clasped the beer in both hands, fingers overlapping. And then he looked up. "But he didn't have to do it the way he did it. The way he does it."

"He's done the best he can. He's been wrong, dead wrong, and he'll be wrong again, but he did what he felt certain he had to do back then, both to get what got your mama, and to keep you safe. Your life ain't been easy, boy, and you'll never hear me say different. But you're comin' out the other side okay, Sam. Your daddy's had a lot to do with that."

"Mostly Dean," Sam insisted.

Bobby didn't dispute that. "Okay. But who raised him?"

Sam drank beer, contemplated some more, then looked at Bobby again. "I thought maybe if I could be like Dean, Dad would love me more."

That was a shock. "Oh, Sam—"

"I thought if I learned to kill monsters as efficiently as Dean does, if I learned to put a car together the way Dean can, if I could fight and shoot and train the way Dean does, I'd be good enough. And then I realized I wanted to be like Dean for another reason too, aside from Dad. I mean, he's not like anyone else, Bobby. I wanted to be confident like him, talk like him, even move like him. You know . . . all that snark and sass and swagger—"

"—covers a multitude of sins," Bobby said dryly. "He's a cocky son of a bitch, I'll grant him that, and a damn good hunter, but your brother's far from perfect."

"And then I figured out that he wants to be like Dad, and the last thing I want is to be like Dad." Sam shrugged. "So—I was back to where I started. I don't fit in, Bobby. I'm different. I don't want the same things. I don't think the way they do. And Dad believes I should, but I can't. I just can't."

Bobby thought maybe now the kid would open up that great Sammy Winchester heart more than he ever had. "Who are you goin' to be, son? What do you want to do?"

Sam drew in a breath. "I want to go to college. I'll be a senior come fall, and that's when I'll have to take the tests, fill out the applications. A couple of the teachers have said I can maybe get a scholarship. I pull straight As." He hitched a shoulder slightly, as if to fend off an implication of arrogance as he stated simple facts. "Tests don't scare me. I've been told I have the right 'work ethic,' the right kind of dedication to make it work."

"And you want this."

"I've been thinking about it for a while."

"I'm willin' to guess you ain't told your daddy."

Sam's wince was visible.

"Your brother know?"

"I hinted at it once, but I've never said that's what I want to do."

"Sam . . . it ain't wrong to want somethin' different."

"It's the 'family business,'" Sam said bitterly.

"And not all sons go into the family business."

Sam's head came up sharply. "You don't think I'm wrong?"

"Now, if you told me you want to go out and become a serial murderer, I'd say that was wrong. But goin' to college? Boy, that's about as 'right' as it can get." Bobby smiled a little. "Son, I dropped out of high school, but my grades were never good enough even if I'd stuck it out, and there was no way we had money to send me. So a scholarship was out. Now, John ain't got the money, either—but you've got the grades, the smarts, and the teachers behind you. I think you'll get yourself a scholarship, and I think you'll do just fine."

"Dad'll kill me."

"Your daddy's gonna holler like there ain't no tomorrow, likely, but he won't kill you. As for your brother . . ." Bobby sighed. "You'll rip his guts out, Sam, but he'll just stuff 'em back inside, patch himself up, and probably drive you there himself."

Sam blew out an unsteady breath. "It's gonna be hard, Bobby. Harder than hunting monsters."

"Huntin' monsters is easy, son. Growin' up is hard."

Sam bobbed his head, then lifted the bottle to his lips and knocked back the balance of his beer. Then he smiled at Bobby, and the sun burst out from behind the clouds.

That's why, Bobby knew. That's why he needed to go. To be happy like that. "A word of advice from an old man?—apply to the best, Sam. Try Ivy League schools. Yale, Harvard, Stanford . . . you got it in you, kid. And don't let your daddy get in your way. If this is what you want, you go after it. Hear me? You put your head down, and go after it."

Sam's eyes glistened. Dimples appeared again. "Yeah," he said. "I will." He rose, paused a moment in thought, then nodded. Arrived at conviction. "Thanks, Bobby."

Bobby watched him go back into the house. And for all he was damn proud of the kid for finding his own way, he knew the rigors of college would be easier for Sam to undertake than telling John Winchester he was leaving the family business.

"Kid's got a right," Bobby murmured. "Kid's got a right to be his own man."

And he'd tell John so—if he ever got the chance.

But it wouldn't be pretty.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean pulled the Impala up in front of the bar, turned off the engine. He was humming some Godawful mullet-rock tune, off-key as usual, that Sam was sick to death of hearing. But he was always outnumbered because both Dad and Dean insisted on classic rock and metal, and referred to Sam's personal preference as panty-waisted, pansy-assed, pussified pop-shit.

You just couldn't win if you had your dad and your older brother against you.

"C'mon, wingman. Let's go get us some action." Dean grinned at him, all bright teeth, mobile mouth, and boundless confidence.

"I'm not your wingman," Sam muttered. "They don't even let me sit at the bar, Dean. I'm too young. Why didn't you let me stay at Bobby's?"

"Ah, c'mon. You gotta get out more, Sammy. How you gonna get a girlfriend if you stay put at Bobby's every weekend reading? And anyway, you got your computer." Dean reached over, thumped fisted knuckles against the laptop perched atop Sam's thighs. "We'll get a booth, and you can hang out there and surf the internet while I surf the bar, shoot a little pool—"

"—and pick up a girl," Sam finished. "You don't need me for that."

"Well, maybe tonight we'll pick up a girl for you," Dean said. "Gotta lose it some time, Sammy. Why not in Sioux Falls the summer before your senior year? Call it an early graduation present! Because the chicks always come in pairs. I'll find one for me, and she'll have a friend, and I'll just arrange—"

Sam cut him off sharply. "I don't need anything arranged, Dean!" His face was burning hot. "Can you just let it go already? And no, I don't need you telling me all over again how you 'lost it' so early—"

"Oh, I didn't lose it, Sammy. I donated to a needy charity." Dean slapped the back of his hand against Sam's shoulder. "C'mon, let's go. If you wanna sit in the booth sucking down soda all night looking up Latin conjugations, that's okay by me. But I'm not leaving you out here in the dark." Dean opened the driver's door with the characteristic squeal and scrape of hinges. "Get your ass out of the car, baby bro. Or I'll haul it out myself."

Sam knew he would. Because he'd done it. So Sam got out of the car, slammed the door closed harder than was absolutely necessary, and followed his brother into the bar.

They all knew Dean, the bartenders and cocktail waitresses. They all knew him. So he didn't even bother trying for a stool at the bar. He just made his way to a back booth, slid in, opened the laptop and turned it on.

Within five minutes Margie arrived with the anticipated soda, set down the glass with her usual friendly smile. She was mid-30s, blue-eyed, with hair an indiscriminate color between blonde and brown, and was not even remotely in Dean's age-range or on his radar. But she was nice, and Sam liked her. "Anything to eat, Sammy?"

He didn't correct her. Dean still called him 'Sammy' often enough that the people they saw regularly in Sioux Falls never did switch to the more adult 'Sam' he preferred. He'd given up. "No. We ate at Bobby's. Just the soda, thanks."

"Brother drag you out?"

"I don't know why he does this." Sam didn't bother to hide his exasperation. "He hardly says two words to me once we get here. He should just come on his own."

Margie shrugged, casting a glance across one shoulder at the bar as Dean collected his beer, made his way back toward the pool table. "He knows you're safe here."

He looked at her in surprise. "Safe?"

"He wouldn't take you into a dive," Margie told him. "Not anywhere he doesn't know people. He flies solo in those joints."

Sam frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Your brother gets around," she said matter-of-factly. "Don't you know that? People talk, Sammy. He doesn't come here when he's alone. He hits the tougher places when he's looking to hustle. But this is neutral ground. He's not above playing for a few bucks here, but he's not serious about it. He's not going to clean anybody out."

Sam snapped his head around, saw Dean concentrating on setting up a very precise rack with the balls arranged just so. He already had an opponent Sam didn't recognize; the regulars hung back, handed cash to one another. A couple of young women drifted close.

Dryly, Margie asked, "Which one do you think it'll be?"

Sam looked at her. "What?"

"The ladies, Sammy. I got five bucks says it'll be the redhead."

Sam blinked up at her. "You trying to hustle me?"

Margie grinned. "We can make it free soda, if you'd rather."

Sam looked back, noted the young women. One the redhead, the other a blonde. Maybe out of a bottle, maybe natural. He hadn't ever paid enough attention to think about such things.

He didn't know why he said it. It just popped out of his mouth. "Both."

Margie's laugh ran free and loud. It cut through the rumble of mostly male voices and reached to the pool table. Sam saw Dean's head come up from concentration as he lined up a shot, saw the green eyes light first on Margie, then on his brother. Dean's brows twitched and his mouth pursed thoughtfully as if he contemplated something. Then he gave Sam a long, slow look of amusement and consideration, tipped his head toward Margie, raised his brows in so obvious a question even Sam got it.

Heat rose up in his face. He couldn't even look Margie in the eye.

"He's incorrigible." Margie's tone was something akin to wry fondness. "Don't you worry about it, Sammy. I'm not hitting on you. And I'm not asking your history, either, though I think from his expression I know what it is." When he flicked a quick, startled glance up at her, he found calm friendliness in her eyes. "You'll find the right girl, Sammy. Don't let the man with that stray cat strut push you into anything you're not ready for, just because he can't keep it in his pants. " Her mouth flattened briefly, and he wondered if maybe there was more to the story than he was hearing. "Now, how about a slice of pie? Or did you have dessert at Bobby's, too?"

"No, no, thanks."

"You let me know if you change your mind. I'll keep the refills coming." She gave him another smile, then departed.

The laptop had gone to sleep. Sam woke it up, had started to type in the URL he wanted when Dean arrived.

"Sammy—"

He cut him off. "Don't start with me, Dean." He knew, he just knew what his brother was going to ask him. He could even hear in his mind the suggestive tone of voice before anything was said.

But Dean didn't say anything of the sort. He dropped his cellphone on the table. "Here. Dad keeps calling, and I don't have time to deal with it in the middle of a game. You call him back, tell him I'm busy."

And he was gone, just like that, while Sam stared after him in surprise. Dean always took Dad's calls. It was one of Dad's rules. He almost never called when Dean took his brother into town; he'd said it was fine if they saw a movie, whatever. So if he did call, it meant something.

Dean was turning his back on Dad's call?

Sam switched his look to the redhead and the blonde. Maybe it wasn't pool Dean was thinking about. Maybe it was the chicks.

Then the phone rang, and the screen announced it was Dad. Sam took the call.

The tone was clipped. Angry. And ice-cold. There was no room for Sam to talk, and what he heard was such a shock that he had nothing to say or ask anyway. He just mumbled "Okay," hung up, closed and picked up the laptop, and went to get his brother.

Dean was not happy. Dean finished his shot, gave Sam a look that most distinctly declared, in an ineffably Dean-like statement: 'No freakin' way," and 'Do you want to die?' And moved on to the next ball.

"We have to go," Sam said tautly. "Now. Dad said so."

"Is he dying?" Dean asked.

"No, but—"

"Is Bobby?"

"No, but—"

"Then I can finish this damn game." He dropped the ball, had two solids left.

Sam stepped close. "Dean—"

Dean's opponent, a big sandy-haired guy with a beer gut, asked, "You playin,' or yappin'?"

"Sammy, move."

"We have to go, Dean."

"You wanna forfeit this game?" Beer Gut asked. "Because you're about to."

"Move, Sammy!"

Sam didn't. "Bobby's holding a loaded shotgun on Dad. He's throwing him off the property."

Dean's head snapped around and he straightened from his posture over the table. "What?"

"Dad says we're leaving. As soon as we get there. He wants us there yesterday."

"Bobby's got a gun on Dad?"

"Hey, Pretty Boy—you shootin' pool, or arrangin' for a hook-up?"

Dean tossed the cue stick across the felt and told the man what he could do with himself. He didn't bother with the money; Sam knew he was forfeiting. Under a full head of steam Dean strode out of the bar, pulled the keys from his jacket pocket even as he motioned for Sam to return his cell.

Sam yanked open the door as soon as Dean reached across and unlocked it from the inside, scrambled into the Impala. "You calling Dad?"

"I think I got the gist. Bobby. Shotgun. Dad. We'll see when we get there." He cranked the engine, hit the gas, sprayed gravel as they departed the parking lot. "Did he say why Bobby was holding a loaded gun on him?"

"No."

"Holy crap," Dean muttered. "What the hell did Dad do to piss off Bobby like that?"

"How do you know it wasn't Bobby pissing Dad off?"

"Because Bobby's holding the gun, moron. If Bobby'd pissed off Dad, it'd be the other way around, though I guess then it would be Dad leaving rather than getting kicked off the property. Besides, of the two of 'em, who's more likely to do the pissing off?"

"Dad."

"Dad. He pisses you off enough."

"He says we're leaving," Sam said. "Leaving, leaving. That we'll hit a motel tonight, then move on down the road. Look for a new town. Not even stay in Wyoming."

It was dark outside as they departed the city limits, but in the reflection of the dash lights Sam saw his brother's head turn sharply. "He wants to leave Cheyenne? But you've got a year to go before graduation."

Sam stared out the windshield and felt the tightness in his chest, felt the anger beginning to well up into his throat. This had happened so many times. But he'd thought they'd stay in Cheyenne long enough for him to finish a whole year in one place, in one school. That he'd graduate while knowing some of the students, instead of being a complete stranger, the new kid no one cared about except to rag on. That he'd stand up and collect his diploma in front of teachers who'd encouraged him to go to college, who were helping him prepare for the placement tests, the applications.

"Sammy?"

It was hard to speak around the tautness of his throat. "He can't do this."

Dean sighed. "Yeah. He can. Legally speaking."

"It's not right."

Dean was quiet a moment. He hadn't even turned on the radio. "I'll talk to him, Sammy."

"Will you?" Hope suddenly shoved anger and devastation right out of his body. "He'll listen to you!"

"I can't swear to that, Sammy. But I'll talk to him."

Sam's mind was working rapidly. "I could go to court. File for emancipation. You could be my legal guardian."

Dean stared at him, astonished. "Sammy—"

"I'll be eighteen in a few months."

"And that means you can wait. You don't have to file anything. Just wait it out. But I'll talk to him, see if I can get him to agree that we'll stay in Cheyenne until you graduate. I mean, just because Bobby's tossing him off the property doesn't mean we need to move to a whole 'nother state. "

"He said he wants to hit the road again."

"We can't do that when you've only got a year left."

"Then Dad can hit the road again, and I'll stay with you."

Tension rode Dean's voice. "He needs me sometimes, Sammy. We take a lot of two-man jobs. You know that. We need to just stay put another year. Then we can figure this out."

Sam had it figured out. His senior year, and then he was gone. But if they pulled up stakes again . . . "It'll set me back," he said tightly. "Too much time, too much classwork. I could lose a whole semester."

"Crap," Dean muttered.

Bobby's salvage yard was only fifteen minutes out of the city limits, and Dean didn't waste any time. He swung off the blacktop onto the cinders of Bobby's long drive, aimed the car to the house through the canyons of junkers and stacked, squashed steel rectangles that bore little resemblance to the shiny new automobiles that had once rolled off the assembly line, driven away from car lots by happy new owners.

He and Dean had spent portions of every summer at Bobby's, and now and then if a hunt brought them close. They'd played among those steel canyons and cliffs. Bobby was family, as much as anyone ever could be who wasn't a Winchester.

Sure enough, as they pulled up to the front of the house, Dad was standing in the gravel before the porch steps. Duffels stuffed full were stacked beside his feet.

"Sammy, stay put," Dean said, and opened the car door.

Bobby's porch light was on, as was practically every light inside the house. It wasn't easy to see John Winchester's face with the illumination behind him, but the posture was unmistakable.

Sam didn't stay put. He got out of the car, but went no further. Instinct told him to let Dean handle it. He stood beside the car and watched across the top, saw his father reach down, grab up a duffel, hurl it at his eldest.

"Load it up," Dad said tautly. "We're leaving."

"Dad," Dean began.

"You heard me."

Dean dropped the duffel to the ground. "We have to talk about this."

"Nothin' to talk about, Dean. Pick that up, put it in the car."

"Not until I know what's going on. You drunk, is that it? You and Bobby hit the bottle a little too hard? Whipped out the junk and started measuring? Because you need to think about what you're doing."

"Singer kicked my ass off his property, and what I'm doing is getting the hell off it!" John shouted.

"And when everyone sobers up you can talk about it, hug it out, settle all the big dog hackles, have a couple of drinks. But whatever's got both of you old men up on your hind legs has nothing to do with Sammy, and it's not fair to screw him over. I won't let you."

Sam stopped breathing.

John's tone was incredulous. "You won't let me?"

"That kid deserves to stay put for one more school year until he graduates. You want to pack us up then and move us down the road, fine. We leave Bobby's tonight and never come back, fine. But you're not screwin' with Sammy. He's your son, Dad, not a robot, not a soldier, not a dog you pat on the head now and then when you feel like it—if you remember—then send him off to sit outside at the end of a chain. You've been dragging us from pillar to post for years, and we've done the best we could under the circumstances, but it's one freakin' year, Dad. No more than that. You owe Sammy that much."

Sam couldn't even recognize the tone in his father's voice. He'd never heard it before. It was a mix of astonishment, disbelief, and something akin to challenge combined with slow realization. "No son of mine talks to me like that."

Dean said, "I just did."

Sam shivered, swallowed down the lump in his throat. This was everything he'd ever wanted, what he'd hoped for, what he'd wished for, so many times, when Dad went on a tear. That Dean would stand up to him. And now he had, but Sam suddenly felt that the whole entire world had gone off its axis.

He didn't know this world. He didn't comprehend this world. He had no place, no Sam-shaped space, in this world.

Dad, he knew. Dean, he knew. Sam and Dad fought; Dean and Dad never did. And he realized, in that moment, that for all he'd longed for this, it wasn't so easy after all to jettison everything he'd known all of his life. To discover that hopes and wishes and wants and desires were very, very different than a new reality, when that new reality would alter the only universe he'd ever known.

Be careful what you wish for.

Going away to college was how you started the rest of your life. It was right, it was natural. It was growing up. But watching what you'd always had, when you've had so little; watching what you expected to have for at least another year simply dissolving before your eyes when you weren't quite ready, was impossibly painful. And suddenly terrifying.

In a world where they had no permanent home, no kid down the street to play with, no classmates he'd known through multiple years of school, the only touchstones, the only life buoys Sam had clung to, were Dean, and Dad.

Dad was, he realized, like Mount Rushmore. And Sam didn't want any of those big presidential heads to slide off the side of the mountain. He wanted them whole. He wanted them to peer out across the plains as they always had, ever since Gutzon Borglum had dynamited and sculpted them out of a granite hillside in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

"Dean." It didn't travel. He tried again, more loudly. "Dean, it doesn't matter. Let's just go."

It mattered. It did matter. But right now, in the midst of all of this, he couldn't let it.

The voice came from the porch. It was the dry, raspy grit and gravel Sam had known all of his life. The voice that had told him his father had been through hell, had lost everything but his two boys. The voice that told him growing up was hard.

"You heard him, John," Bobby Singer said. "Time for you to get the hell off my property. Now, your sons are welcome any time, but you?—I'd say you're done."

"Bobby—" Dean began.

But Bobby was looking at Dad, and a shotgun was in his hands. "Do I have to fill your ass full of buckshot?"

Dad didn't say anything. He picked up a duffel, threw it at Dean, then grabbed the other two and strode to the car, dumped them through the open window into the back seat. Then he slid into place behind the steering wheel and pulled closed the door.

"Bobby," Dean said, "don't do this."

"It's done, boy. You and Sam are welcome any time."

Dean shook his head. His tone was raw. "Bobby—he's my dad."

"I know that, son. I know what you gotta do. And I wish you both the best. As for Sam . . . look after your brother, Dean. You do right by him, just as you always have."

Sam stared across the top of the car. Too much light behind Bobby; he couldn't see his face. He couldn't see Dean's, either. This wasn't what he wanted. This was never what he'd wanted.

Sam opened the back door and climbed in, closed it.

Dean turned from Bobby. Took the few steps to the car, thrust the remaining duffel through the open window to rest atop the two Dad had already placed. And then he rounded the car, climbed into the shotgun position, thudded home the door on the grind and creak of hinges, and never said a word as John Winchester drove his sons away from Bobby Singer.

Sam felt the sting in his eyes. He knew. He just knew what Bobby and Dad had argued about. A son leaving a father. A brother leaving a brother. Leaving family.

_This wasn't what I wanted. Not like this._

Sam scooted forward until he sat on the edge of the seat. Dean sat facing forward, but his head was turned to the window and the darkness beyond. In the light of passing cars, Sam saw the too-bright sheen in Dean's only visible eye.

He reached forward over the seatback, put his hand on his brother's right shoulder. Knotted it into his coat. Clung to the Dean-shaped life buoy.

Dean still gazed fixedly out of the window. But after a moment he reached up his right hand, patted the back of Sam's twice.

Sam released a trembling breath.

This much of the world is good. This much of the world is right.

This was all he needed of it. All he needed in it.


	8. Chapter 8

Dean waited until Dad had gone into the motel room before he stepped in front of Sam at the Impala, effectively blocking him. "There's an all-night diner right over there." He gestured with his head to indicate the restaurant maybe two hundred yards from the motel. "Why don't you go grab something to eat." But he didn't make it a question.

Sam gazed back at him. "Why?"

Over a day had passed since Bobby had hoisted a shotgun and ordered John Winchester off his property. They'd spent most of those twenty-four hours in the Impala. Sam's brain worked very fast; maybe the kid had moved on from stewing over the events. Dean hadn't, but he'd been too upset to get into it with Dad again. Especially when all of them were in close confines.

Now? Yeah. "Me and Dad are going to have a talk."

"It's 'Dad and I are going to have a talk.'"

Dean frowned. "You and Dad are going to have a talk?"

"No, you and Dad are going to have a talk. I guess. I was correcting your grammar. It's not 'me and Dad,' or 'Dad and me.' It's 'Dad and I.' Because it's not 'me is going to have a talk.' That's how you figure it out, Dean. You think 'I am going to have a talk,' which means the correct usage is 'Dad and I.'"

Dean gazed at his little brother, who wasn't really 'little' any more since Sam now, at 6'3", was an inch taller than Dean. _When is this kid going to stop growing?_

But what he said was, "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Grammar and punctuation are important, Dean. It's how we communicate with people. If we don't do it right—if we don't do it correctly—people may misunderstand. It's the whole 'eats, shoots and leaves' vs. the 'eats shoots and leaves' thing. With the panda. Because in the former example, the panda eats food, shoots a gun, and departs, while in the latter, the panda eats shoots and leaves. Shoots and leaves from a tree. See the difference? It's about the commas."

Dean contemplated that for a half-second, envisioning a panda with a gun. "I'd rather eat, shoot a gun, and depart than eat shoots and leaves from a tree. But that's just the way I roll. Now, if you don't get out of here, 'me' is going to punctuate your grammatical little ass."

After a shift from earnest puppy dog eyes to something approximating a classic Sammy Winchester bitchface, which he was perfecting very nicely, his brother headed off toward the diner. Sighing, Dean hooked his duffel out of the car, stuffed the key in the door, and shouldered it open.

Dad was sitting on the side of his bed pouring whiskey into a plastic glass. "What took you so long?"

"I sent Sam over to the diner." He moved to the bed farthest from the door; Dad always took the one closest. Protection, he'd said all those years ago, and they'd never questioned it. "You and me—" He broke that off, flashing on Sammy's little lecture, and altered his sentence. "We are going to have a talk."

"A talk."

Dean slid the duffel off his shoulder, dropped it to the foot of the bed he'd share with Sam. Which was becoming more and more problematical, since his brother's latest growth spurt. Three Winchester males all over six feet and all of them with long limbs. But get two rooms so everyone would have his own bed? Too expensive.

_But if Sammy leaves, it'll just be Dad and . . . huh. Was it 'Dad and I', or 'Dad and me?'_

Damn, but now he'd never be able to say anything again without thinking of Sam and his grammar! Eats, shoots, and leaves. Commas. Jesus Christ.

Sam was going to eat, shoot, and leave. Or shoot, eat, and leave.

'Leave' being the operative word.

"Last night we left Bobby's place," Dean began, "which, next to Pastor Jim's, is the closest thing Sam and I have to a real home. Yeah, you rent a place for a few months now and then, if it seems centrally located for supernatural activity, but it's not the same as always going back to the same place every year. A place where we know where the best fishing hole is, where the old tire swing hangs, even the whole Cheers TV show thing, where we can walk into a bar and everyone knows our names."

Dad put down the cup on the bedside table dividing the beds and began to strip out of his leather coat. "Didn't realize having people in dive bars knowing your name was a goal of yours, Dean."

He ignored the gibe. "So, you managed to get your ass thrown off Singer property, and I want to know why. You and Bobby have argued before, but he's never raised a freakin' gun to you."

Dad dumped the coat to the foot of the bed, removed his boots, stretched out with his back against the headboard and grabbed whiskey again. He looked tired, with blood-shot eyes, mussed dark hair, lines deepening with age, though most were lost in the scruff of dark beard. "I got angry," Dad said, in his slow, dark voice, "because he stuck his nose in where it doesn't belong. It's family business."

Dean sat down, began to untie boot laces. "Bobby's as much family as anyone in the world."

"I got angry, and I got stupid. It's a failing of mine."

Dean's fingers froze upon his laces. He stared blankly at his boot. Had Dad just admitted . . . ?

Yes. He had.

Dean began to work the laces again, afraid if he looked up and met his father's eyes that Dad would stop being honest. Being open. Winchesters didn't do open . . . well, that wasn't true. Sammy did 'open' better than anyone Dean knew.

"Yeah," Dad said, "I drink too much. I've got a temper, and I lose it too often. I boss you and Sammy around. I bark at you when maybe I could ask. I've even been known to grab a shoulder and shove one of my sons—or both of my sons—out of the way with a little too much English on it because I'm damn scared they're going to get their heads bitten off by some kind of monster if I don't. And I'm a wise-ass, and I'm an asshole, and I'm a piss-poor father when it comes to most things . . . when it comes to anything else, I guess, than keeping you alive. I don't know, maybe that doesn't count for much these days, now that you're cock-of-the-walk and Sammy's pushing all my buttons."

Dean straightened. Now he met his father's eyes. He couldn't even blink.

"You think I don't know what I've done?" Dad asked. "What kind of life I threw you and Sammy into all those years ago? I was running on grief and rage, Dean. And I blew hot, and I blew cold, and I went back to war. And yeah, I could have tried to find someone to leave my sons with instead of dropping you at Jim Murphy's or Bobby's a few months here and there, or making you hole up in skeevy motel rooms while I hunted."

Dean opened his mouth to speak, but Dad cut him off.

"Or I could have even put you in the system, where they'd have split you and Sam up because no one wants two boys, they just want an infant, or an older boy without the baggage of a baby."

Dean didn't even want to contemplate that emotional nightmare.

"You know, I wanted that apple pie life with your mother, I really did, and for a few years I had it. But that son of a bitch walked into _my_ house, walked into _my_ nursery, and murdered my wife. Murdered the woman I would have died for." His tone was bitter-cold. "But I never got the chance, because that thing got her first."

Dean swallowed tightly. "Dad—"

John Winchester set down the whiskey he hadn't even touched. "Now, let's do a little role-playing for just a minute, okay? You, Dean Winchester—all of twenty-one, and a tough, cocky, smart-mouthed son of a bitch—don't have a wife, don't have any kids. All you've got is a broke-down excuse for a father, and a whip-smart baby brother who overthinks everything because he's so full of emotion. Not that he's soft, but that he cares too much about everything. And that can get you killed." Dad's mouth tightened. "So that's what you've got: your old man, and your baby brother . . . oh, and a demon on your ass." The dark eyes were steady. "I didn't start hunting the son of a bitch because I just got up one day and said 'Hey, I think I'll try to catch me a demon!' That thing came after us, Dean. It came _after_ us. And there's no reason to think it won't come after us again."

"So, you want to take it out first."

"If I can. If I can find it. That's the mission. For payback, and to stop it before it kills my boys. But in the meantime, look back on the picture I just painted. There's a demon hunting Sammy and me. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about us?"

_For Sammy and Dad, the things I'm willing to do or kill . . ._

He knew what he'd become. A soldier in Dad's war.

"Yeah." Dean nodded. "I get it. But Sammy's so close, now. One more year. You move us again, and he may lose a semester's worth of schoolwork. That's not fair. And, besides—" But he couldn't say it. Couldn't go farther. He just couldn't.

"'Besides?'" Dad quoted.

Dean released a breath. "He's not like us."

"He should be."

"No. He should be himself. He should be Sammy. He should go and do whatever he wants to go and do."

"Your brother is needed, Dean. Just as you are. This is a war we wage, we hunters. Every soldier is needed."

"Dad—"

"Every person saved is a win. Every monster killed is a win. You don't think the mission is worth it?"

"I do, but—"

"Not every man who goes to war is ready, Dean. I wasn't, and I realized that the minute I stepped off the plane in Vietnam. But I survived because good men made sure I learned how to survive. And that's what I've taught you and your brother. How to survive. Every day is a battle in the war, and one step closer to victory. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let my boys be killed. If you and Sammy hate me for it, so be it. I'll live with that. I can live with anything if it keeps my boys alive."

"And if Sammy lives, but you lose him anyway?"

"I won't lose Sammy. I told Singer that, and I'm telling you that. I'll tell Sam, too, if it comes right down to it. He's safest with us." He shook his head. "You don't know the demon the way I know that demon. Besides—"

But Dad broke it off. Dean waited, felt poised on the brink of something, some kind of revelation.

"—I need to keep my eye on him," Dad continued, in a very different tone. It was as if he were hiding something, husbanding knowledge he could not share. Or would not. "Need to keep him safe. Keep all of us safe."

But there was more, and Dean knew it. He knew, too, that there would be no additional information forthcoming. He recognized the look in his father's eye. The subject was closed.

Dean pulled his bootlace snug, retied it. Rose, then scooped up the cup of whiskey from the nightstand and knocked it back. He looked at his father, at the expression he knew so well. The Winchester minefield remained intact and active, and John's sons still had to pick their way through it.

"Yeah. Okay." He set down the cup, walked toward the door. Nothing had changed. But everything would change.

"Dean."

He paused with his hand on the latch, but did not turn around. "I'm gonna go spend some time with my brother. Talk about grammar."

Dean crossed the lot, entered the diner, found his brother and slid into the booth across from him. He summoned his most engaging smile, the one meant to set Sammy at ease, to give him hope. "We had a talk. Dad. Me. I."

"And?"

The smile faded. With his little brother, he never could maintain the façade. "I'm asking you to stay. When you're done with high school."

Sam said, "No."

"Sammy—"

"I don't know where I'm going yet, but you could come with."

Dean looked into the steady, determined eyes. "I can't, Sammy."

"Why not?"

_Because when you go, Dad will be down a soldier._

But Sam, at least, wouldn't have to be one.

Dean looked at the table a moment, absently noticed the remains of dessert—cobbler? Should have had pie—then raised his eyes to his brother's. "Every person saved is a win. Every monster killed is a win. And I think the mission is worth it."

Thinking, too, that a year, or eighteen months, was not enough time, not enough time at all, in which to say goodbye.


	9. Chapter 9

Sam was pissed. He'd intended to study all day and well into the evening hours, just to make sure he had his head on straight for the test tomorrow; but no, John Winchester had dragged him out into the darkness of a moonless night in the middle of a freakin' rainstorm, and God knew how long it would take to kill off the latest in a long line of monsters or what time they'd get back to the rented house or when he'd even get to bed so he could get some sleep before the day dawned and he had to sit down at a too-small school desk and take the test that would determine what he hoped would be the rest of his life.

He was so pissed, in fact, that he wasn't even listening to his brother; wasn't even paying attention to his brother. He just bitched as they made their way through the deep wood in the middle of a very dark night in the midst of pouring rain. Dad had gone on ahead, leaving him and Dean to bring up the rear.

"We shouldn't even be out here," Sam said, holding gun tucked under an armpit while he held flashlight in the other. "Not all three of us."

Dean paced him from about five feet away, also carrying gun and flashlight. "So it's okay if Dad and I come out to kill monsters, but you get to stay back in the house?"

"I have the SAT tomorrow, Dean! It's important."

"What's an ess-a-tee?"

"Scholastic Aptitude Test. Part of college placement." Sam swiped his forearm against his face, clearing it of rain. "I have a 4.0 GPA and a good shot at scoring scholarships if I ace the SAT. I already lost a semester because Dad moved us again—I've got to do well on this."

"Can't you reschedule?"

"They only hold it certain times a year. If I miss this one, I'll have to wait months. And I'm not going to lose more time!" He felt a brief pinch of remorse. "Look—I know you tried to talk Dad into staying put in Cheyenne, and I appreciate it. But these things are important to me, Dean. I've had to repeat a couple of classes and now I'm behind . . . I can't miss this test. I won't."

"So don't."

Sam flipped the aim of his flashlight, illuminated his brother. Dean, too, was soaked, short-cropped hair flattened against his head. They'd had a brief window of no rain, which is when Dad dragged them out here, but it had been raining steadily for the last hour. Their coats were water-repellent, but not water-proof, and both of them were pretty wet.

"'So don't,'" Sam mimicked. "Right, Dean. You know Dad will keep us out here until dawn if that's what it takes."

"It's two black dogs, Sam. You know how they work in pairs. Dad needed—"

Sam interrupted. "He didn't need us both. You're as good as he is, so it's one-on-one. He could have let me stay back to study. He just didn't want to."

Dean flashed his light across the way. "Damn, but you can be a pissy little princess when you feel like it. Have a little cheese with your whine, already! Maybe Dad wants three of us out here so the job takes less time, you ever think of that?" Then he waved an arm, flapped a hand. "Forget it."

And the anger welled up. Anger. Frustration. Resentment.

Sam's light found his brother stalking ahead. "You know, you could be anything, Dean, and still help people!" Dean was a hero already; he could continue being a hero. "Firefighter. Cop."

Dean paused, turned his head back toward his brother. Sam saw his face, one hand lifted to block part of the light. "Sammy, come on, let's get this done, okay? Enough with the pissing and mo—"

And then, without warning, Dean disappeared.

Sam was stunned into momentary immobility. Not a black dog. He was sure of it. No. It was as if the earth had opened up. Dean had fallen.

And then Sam realized the earth _had_ opened up, because the beam of his flashlight found the edge of the hole. The hole that simply hadn't been there before. Sinkhole.

"Dean!" Sam approached with infinite care, aware that the edge of the sinkhole might be unstable. He knelt down, leaned forward bit by bit, shone the flashlight down.

Dean lay on his back some thirty feet below, left leg doubled beneath his right thigh. He was bent slightly at the hips, head turned to the left, with both arms sprawled loosely. Blood streaked his brow, but even as Sam watched, rain washed it away.

"Dean! Can you hear me? Dean!" Dean's flashlight had gone down into the hole with him, but wasn't on. Maybe broken. "Hey!" Sam called. "Dean. Can you hear me?"

He saw fingers twitch, saw the brief scrape of hands against dirt. Dean bent up his right knee, dug his heel into earth, rolled his head to the right.

— _okay, he's moving . . . thank God, he's moving_ —

"Dean!" Sam scrabbled inside a pocket, pulled free his phone, intending to call Dad.

"Sam . . ." It was weak, but it was Dean.

"Hey!" Sam called. "Stay still, okay? I'm going to try and get Dad—" He thumbed the display, called up the screen.

NO SERVICE

"Dammit—" Sam held the phone up into the air, trying to elevate it to improve the chance of getting a signal. "C'mon, c'mon . . ."

"S-Sammy . . ."

He pointed the flashlight downward again, illuminated his brother. Dean was moving against the earth, scraping his hands and arms in an aimless fashion. He dug at dirt with the heel of his right boot, flattening his leg, then drawing it up to dig all over again in an odd repetitive motion.

Oh, man. "Don't move!" Sam called down. "Dean—just stay still. Did you hit your head?" He'd seen blood against his forehead. "Dean, can you understand me?"

Dean's eyes were closed. Even beneath the rain, Sam could see how pale he was. His mouth was halfway open. A long, rising moan sent a chill through Sam's gut. He knew his brother to swear a blue streak when he was hurt, or was being treated by Dad for cuts, claw marks, slashes. He'd hiss, or grunt, or release noisy breaths. But Dean didn't moan. He'd consider that a weakness, and weakness he never gave into. He was moving his arms, moving the one leg. Injuries likely did not involve his spine, which Sam counted a massive win. But a head injury? Yeah, that could cause all kinds of difficulties.

A check of the phone showed NO SERVICE.

The storm. Had to be. Severe weather could affect satellite service, and if they were far enough away from a cell tower . . . well, he wasn't going to reach Dad by phone. And he couldn't drop down into the hole on his own, or they'd both be stuck. A quick flashlight check of the sinkhole showed crumbling sides.

He could go for Dad, but didn't know where he was. He could go for the car; he knew exactly where it was.

"Dean! I'm going to head for the Impala, grab some rope. I'll be right back. Okay? Just stay still, don't try to get up or move around. Dean?" Sam leaned forward, flashed the light upon his brother. "Did you hear me? D—" And the lip of the hole gave way.

On his way down, all Sam could think to do was pull in arms and legs and make himself small, because the last thing he wanted to do was land on his brother. Falling thirty feet was like falling from a three-storey house. Sam landed hard, but was all balled up with arms and legs pulled in, trying to protect his core as well as his head.

He struck hip first, flopped over onto a shoulder, felt his legs splay out and strike the sides of the hole. Winded, he lay gasping and whooping, sprawled now with limbs askew. It took a while to catch his breath. His left hand lay atop cloth. He turned it palm-down, patted at the cloth. Dean. That alone finally stirred his lungs to work properly again.

Once he sucked in enough air to clear the odd prickles of light at the edge of his vision, he pushed himself into a sitting position. He felt achy and bruised, a little weak, but seemed to be intact. Except maybe for his bottom lip. Split. He spat blood, tongued the lip in careful exploration even as he drew his knees up to crouch beside Dean. He grabbed his flashlight from where it had fallen, thanked providence it remained functional, and illuminated his brother.

The rain was merciless. Dean's jeans were sodden, dyed dark, and his coat had fallen away. The front of his shirt was water-logged. His eyes were closed, but lids twitched against the rain. His mouth worked as if he meant to say something, but all that issued forth was another low, broken moan.

Sam shifted, tried to angle his body so he took the brunt of the rain and blocked it from his brother. He touched the side of Dean's face, slicked away the water. Dean startled, caught his breath. "Hey," Sam said. "Hey, hey. I'm right here. How're you doing?" He knew part of the answer: not good. But any coherent response from Dean would be a massive relief.

Dean's eyes fluttered open. Sam aimed the flashlight so the beam was bounced off the side of the sinkhole, dissipated so that Dean wasn't blinded. He blinked repeatedly, frowned faintly. "Sammy . . ."

"Yeah, I'm right here." Sam caught Dean's arm as he lifted it, swiped at against his brother. Sam bent the elbow, laid the arm down across Dean's abdomen. "Easy."

"—hurt?" Dean's voice was weak.

"You are. I'm not. Dean—I need to find out what injuries you have. Can you tell me what hurts?"

"—doesn't . . ."

"It doesn't hurt?"

"—what doesn't hurt . . . s'question."

Well, that made a kind of sense. "So everything hurts?"

"—headache. Leg."

"I need to check your pupils, Dean. Sorry." Naturally Dean slammed shut his eyes as Sam turned the flashlight on them. He applied thumb to lift one lid, then the other. Pupils were blown, but equally reactive. "You've got a concussion. Which leg hurts?"

Dean closed his eyes, seemed to fade.

"Dean. C'mon. Which leg hurts?"

"—one of 'em . . ."

"Which one of them?"

Dean slapped at wet jeans. Left hand on left leg. Apparently coming up with left or right as a verbal directional indicator was beyond him at the moment. "Okay. Let's leave your right leg crooked up, okay? Here—push up, now plant that boot. Hold it here." Sam guided the right leg into position, rotated it slightly apart so he had a better view of the doubled left leg. He set Dean's boot down, clamped a hand over his bent knee, leaned down to see what he could of the left leg.

Jeans. Boot. That's all he saw.

"Sammy?"

"Yeah?"

"You okay?"

Sam looked at his brother's face. Dean's eyes were open. His voice sounded stronger. His words held greater clarity. Sam released the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Look, I'm going to use my knife to cut your jeans. I need to see that left leg."

"Pretty sure it's busted."

Dean definitely was making more sense. "I need to see how badly, then. Keep your right leg bent up, okay?"

"—call Dad?"

"No signal."

Dean frowned as Sam applied knife blade to the tough hem of his jeans. "—you climb down here?"

"A little unexpected side-trip." Sam put away the knife, gripped the denim, tore it from cut hem to knee level. He was careful, but the motion nonetheless jarred Dean's leg. He got a good look, and wanted to squirm.

His brother sucked in a noisy breath, then let it go on a stuttering grunt. "S-sam . . .?

"Yeah," he said with false lightness. "Uh, busted shin, okay?"

"Just broken, or compound?"

"Compound. You've got bone sticking out."

"How bad?"

Sam wanted to avoid the truth, but gave in to it nonetheless. "Well, it's not good. But it could be worse. Listen—I'm going to straighten out your leg. I don't want to risk you dropping your right leg on top of it if you pass out."

"—ungh," Dean commented, which Sam chose to take as agreement, or maybe permission.

The break was midway down Dean's shin. Sam did an eyeball measurement, built up a mound of soil where he felt the leg should go once straightened. Then slipped one hand underneath the ankle, the other just below the knee, and carefully straightened the limb even as he settled it gently atop the mound of wet earth.

Dean emitted a string of breathy invective, but Sam counted this a major improvement over that horrible keening moan he'd heard before. This was Dean in pain and mad about it, but not so checked out that Sam feared for brain injury.

Dean slapped down one hand into wet earth quickly transforming to mud. "Sonofabitch." And then, "You said 'an unexpected sidetrip.' You fall?"

"The ground gave way. It's a sinkhole. Same one that grabbed you."

"You've got no way out of here, do you?"

"Not until Dad comes."

"Try the phone."

"Mine's missing."

"Mine, you moron. It's in my pocket. Here." Dean grabbed Sam's wrist, placed his hand on the coat pocket.

Sam grinned briefly even as he reached into the pocket. "You losing your words again?"

Dean frowned faintly, lifted his left hand to his face and wiped at his brow. His lashes were spiky with rain. Sam shifted again to try and block most of the rain as he pulled the cell free, turned it on.

NO SERVICE

"Nope."

"Gun," Dean said. "I don't know where mine is. I lost it when I fell."

Sam swore—how could he not have thought of that?—grabbed the flashlight, and shone it all over the sinkhole, looking for one or both weapons. He found nothing. "All right," he said, "I'm going to try the old-fashioned way."

"What's that?"

"I'm going to yell my lungs out. Hold the flashlight."

"Storm," Dean said. "Thunder. You know?"

Sam rose, balanced on spread feet, cupped hands around his mouth and bellowed repeatedly for their father. He tried to time it so as not to compete with thunder. For a moment it was quiet, save for the slap and hiss of steady rain. Then came a distant gunshot.

Dean swore. "If he's in the middle of taking out a black dog, he's too busy to hear you. Especially if they're working together . . ."

Sam ignored him. He shouted again and again.

"Dammit, Sammy, don't distract him! Just wait. Just—give him time. If he takes them out, he'll come for us. He'll come back. We just need to wait a while. He'll come."

Yes, Dad would come. If he could.

Sam prowled aimlessly a moment. The sinkhole was maybe 5x8, roughly, though not squared off into clean corners. The walls were vertical but pocked with hollows and holes, and were studded with torn tree roots. Sam reached up high, caught one, tugged on it. If he could find roots that were sturdy enough to hold him, he could perhaps climb out. But very few roots came down low enough for him to grasp. Most were around fifteen to twenty feet up.

 _If I can climb up, I can get rope from the car, repel back down, tie Dean, then climb back out and haul him up . . ._ Or go get Dad, and they could work together to pull Dean out of the hole.

Another gunshot broke the air in the midst of the rain. Two shots for one dog? One shot per dog? Maybe both were dead. If both were dead, and Dad discovered his phone wasn't working, he'd head back to find out where his sons were. Even if it was to chew them out for screwing up the job.

Sam shouted.

"Sammy, don't . . ."

He ignored his brother and shouted again. But he had no idea if his voice carried at all. He was deep in a hole in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Those roots. Sam glanced down at his brother. After a moment's indecision, he stripped out of his jacket. "I'm going to try something. Try to climb out. I'm going to drape this over your face in case I disturb more earth."

"Don't!" Dean said sharply. "You could pull it down in on us both. Sammy, don't. Just wait for Dad."

He moderated neither tone nor words. "Dad could be dead." He spread the jacket lightly over his brother's face and chest, slapped Dean's hand as he reached for it. "Leave it alone. I'm going to try once, see what happens. Keep aiming the flashlight up."

From beneath the jacket, Dean swore. Sam moved as far from his brother as he could. The thickest root anywhere within reach—if he jumped—might or might not be able to hold his weight. He couldn't know that until he tried it.

He jumped, caught not where he wanted at the thickest portion of the root closest to the wall, but halfway down. He tried to pull himself up, trying to grab a higher root as he dug boot toes into the soil, but the one he held broke. Even as he dropped, wet soil tumbled down into the hole.

"Sammy, dammit—"

Sam landed upright on both feet, spat out mud and scrubbed a forearm across his face. Dean had yanked the jacket aside and glared up at his brother. "Maybe a bucket's worth of dirt," Sam said, and smiled. "Nothing to get all pissy over, princess." He knelt, pulled his jacket away, shook it free of clods, then spread it over Dean's chest below his chin. "Guess I'm back to yelling."

"Just wait, Sam. Dad'll come."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Then we wait for morning, get a better idea of the conditions then. Until then, we need to conserve the flashlight batteries. We'll just sit in the dark and sing Kumbaya, how's that sound?"

"You don't even know that song!"

"Do so. Don't you remember the summer at Pastor Jim's when he had that church singing group stay for a couple of weeks?"

"Oh. Yeah. We had to sing, too." Sam sat down next to his brother, took the flashlight, turned it off. "I remember you caterwauling in my ear, now that you mention it."

"I don't caterwaul—whatever the hell that means."

"According to the dictionary, it means to make a shrill howling or wailing noise."

"I don't caterwaul!"

"Dean, you caterwaul every time you open your mouth to sing along with the radio or tape deck."

"You have a tin ear. Look that up in the dictionary."

Sam leaned his back against the crumbled wall behind him. He was soaked to the teeth; what did a little mud matter? He was cold and verging on shivering. "How you feeling?"

"Awesome."

"No, really. You shivering?"

"I'm lying in the mud, it's pouring, and everything's wet. What do you think?"

"That you could be going into shock." Sam reached out, placed a hand atop Dean's shoulder. Yes. Shivers. He patted soaked jacket. "We could try spooning."

"We're not spooning."

"We may have to. Dean, this is why . . . " But he didn't finish. What good would it do? Dean had made up his mind. He stared into the dark as the rain pounded down and wished he were anywhere but here.

"What, Sam? Something's rolling around in that brain like a hamster on a wheel. Round and round and round, going nowhere. You're cogitating."

Sam considered not answering, or deflecting. Instead, he was honest. "We shouldn't be here. Not me, not you, not Dad. But he made his choice almost twenty years ago. We never did."

Dean groaned. "Sammy, I don't want to talk about it. We've talked it to death!"

Yeah, they probably had. But still. "You're down in a sinkhole in the middle of the night in the midst of a thunderstorm with a concussion and a broken leg, Dean. All because Dad dragged us out here to hunt black dogs."

His brother was silent.

"You know I'm right."

No answer.

"Dean? You conscious?"

Nothing.

"Dean!"

"—m conscious. Jus' ignorin' you."

Sam frowned. He turned the flashlight on, played it over his brother. Dean was very pale. Shudders wracked him. He was again digging at dirt with the heel of his right boot, over and over. Deflecting pain, Sam realized. And definitely going into shock.

Okay. They couldn't truly spoon to share heat because Sam didn't want to turn Dean onto his side and disturb his leg. And then there was the whole getting naked thing in the middle of a forest. But he could stretch out alongside his brother and lie against him, try to warm up his right side. "I'm going to move alongside you," Sam said. "Get all up close and personal."

Dean didn't make a sound.

"Dean. Hey." Just as Sam began to shift, to check his brother again, he heard something in the distance. He froze, tried to tune out the rain.

"Sam! Dean!"

He scrambled up. "Dad! Dad! We're here! We're in a hole!" He bent, grabbed the flashlight, played its beam straight up into the air and waved it around. If he could catch trees, even rainfall, it would reflect.

"Sam!"

"Down here! Look for the light! See it? Dad—we're in a hole. Look for the light!"

Dad's voice sounded closer. "Yell again, Sam!"

He did so, for all he was worth.

"Okay, I gotcha—holy crap . . . what is that, a sinkhole?"

"Don't come too close!" Sam shouted. "The edge is unstable. It's how I ended up down here after Dean fell."

Dad didn't approach, but from the sound of his voice he wasn't that far away. "Is he okay?"

"Concussion and a broken leg. Compound tib-fib fracture. He's going into shock, Dad. We need to get him out of here."

"Okay, Sam." Dad's voice was calm and measured. "Any other injuries?"

"I don't think so."

"He conscious?"

"In and out."

"How about you?"

"I'm okay," Sam said.

"Are you sure?"

I'm fine. Really, Dad."

"Alright. I'm going to the car, get some things. But right now I'm going to throw you my coat, okay? I want you to get your brother into it, get him a little warmth from my body. You got that? Heads up. Incoming."

Sam saw the big leather coat hit the top of the hole, fall over the edge. He put up both hands, caught it as it came down. "Got it."

"Okay, you wrestle him into that right away. I won't leave until it's done. Then I want you to throw the flashlight up, and I'll use it to mark the hole so I can get back to it quickly. You got that?"

"Yeah." Sam knelt down, set the flashlight aside, shoved an arm beneath Dean's shoulders and levered him upright. He placed the coat beneath his brother, tugged it into position, pushed Dean up farther and tugged at the leather again. Then he began bending his brother's arms and shoving them into sleeves.

Halfway through the process Dean stirred, protested weakly. "I'm putting you into clothes, not taking any off," Sam said, "so don't tell me I have to buy you dinner first. Listen, Dad's here. It's his coat. He wants to warm you up."

"—Dad?"

"Yeah. He found us. " Sam eased Dean back down, tugged the coat closed over his chest.

"—he good?"

Sam squinted up into the rain. "Dean wants to know if you're okay!"

"I'm fine!" Dad shouted back. "I took out those black dogs. Wondered where in the hell you two were . . . well, now I know. Sam, you ready to throw me the light?"

"Coming up!" He threw it on an angle, watched it go out of sight. "You got it?"

"Yeah. Okay, I'm going on to the car. I'll be back as soon as I can. Look after your brother, Sammy."

Sam grimaced. _Like I wouldn't_. He knelt down again at Dean's side, felt around to make sure coat remained closed. "You any warmer?"

Dean raised and crossed both arms, locked leather against chest. "L'il bit."

Sam didn't know how Dad had arranged the flashlight—maybe in a tree, on a stump—but dim illumination reached partway down the hole. Sam peered upward. "Hey—I think the rain is letting up."

"Peachy. Hey—tol' ya he'd come . . ."

Sam smiled. "Yeah, you did."

"—not dead . . . take worse 'n black dogs to get Dad."

"You don't have to talk, Dean. Just rest."

"—m wet, cold, hurtin' . . . not restin'."

"Okay."

"—coulda fallin' off a ladder, Sammy."

Sam blinked. Where on earth had his brother's head gone now? "Uhh, I guess."

"—people fall off ladders 'n die . . .get run over in driveways . . . "

"Well, yeah."

" . . . even get struck by lightning, though th' odds are pretty low, I guess, from what I read."

"Dean—what are you talking about?"

"That I can die doing anything, Sammy. But this . . . this is good. Helps people. Saves people."

Sam sighed. "Yeah."

"Got a busted head, busted leg . . . and never laid an eye on the black dogs. Coulda happened walkin' through the forest."

"Well, we wouldn't have been walking through the forest if we weren't hunting, Dean."

"People die hunting, too. I mean, animal hunting. Game hunting. You know?"

"If you want to discuss odds, we can," Sam said. "I'm a Mathlete, remember? And I'm on the debate team. Do you really want to pit yourself against me, Dean? Because I'll beat your ass."

Dean was quiet a moment. "What if I said I needed you to protect my ass?"

Sam felt a clench in his chest. "That's dirty pool, Dean. And not true. You and Dad . . . " He shook his head. "You should see the two of you work together. It's like it's choreographed. You'll be fine without me."

"Dad doesn't believe you'll do it."

"He'll believe it when I walk out the door."

"Sam! Dean!"

"Dad's back." Sam rose, peered upward. The rain really was letting up. "Yeah!"

"Okay, I'm tying off rope, and then I'm going to drop it down. You'll need to make a harness, put it on your brother, and guide him up partway as I pull. Hang on, I've got a lantern—I'll toss the flashlight back down." Sam caught it. "I'm dropping down an inflatable air splint and tape," Dad called. "I want you to get it on your brother's leg, blow it up, stabilize it as best you can."

"Go ahead!" Once the flashlight was in his possession, Sam stuffed the butt into the damp earth wall, then freed the clear plastic splint from the packaging and knelt at Dean's side again. "Okay, I gotta lift your leg a little, ease this under it. It zips, okay? I'll zip it up, then inflate it. Then we'll get you out of here."

As Sam worked, Dean inhaled a breath on a long hiss of pain. "—whatever you gotta do—" He shifted beneath Sam's hands. "Dammit."

"Sorry. I'm sorry, Dean."

"Rope's coming down!" Dad shouted.

Sam heard it slap against the wall and floor. "Okay! I'm working on the splint!"

"Let me know when you're ready for me to pull him up!"

Sam positioned the splint, got the zipper started at the ankle, worked it up toward Dean's thigh carefully. "Okay, I'm going to start inflating. It's probably going to hurt." Dean didn't say anything. "Hey. You with me?"

"How's he doing?" Dad called.

Shit. "He's out again!"

"Hurry, Sammy. You're doing good."

Well, if Dean was unconscious, he might not feel the air pressure against his broken leg. Sam found the intake valve, bent to begin the long process of inflating the splint breath-by-breath.

Dean roused as the pressure built. He flopped both arms as if to reach for his leg, muttered a protest.

"I know, I know—almost." Sam breathed deeply for himself, then bent down again, blew hard into the valve. The splint felt firm. "Okay, Dad!"

"It's duct tape," Dad called. "Nothin' fancy. Just tear strips, wrap the splint. You ready?"

"Toss it." The roll came down. Sam caught it, began tearing strips. Then taped the inflated splint at increments from ankle to thigh, adding extra above and below the break in Dean's lower leg.

"Sammy—you've got your knife?"

"Yes!"

"Okay. Cut about two feet off the end the rope. Then do a double-wrap under Dean's arms with the main rope. Take the leftover two feet, tie his wrists together, then tie them to his belt. If he's unconscious, he could slip right out of the wraps when I start to pull him up. This way his arms have to stay down and I can haul him up. Got that?"

"Got it!"

"When he's ready, tell me. Then I'll need you to steady him as far up as you can reach. Once I've got him up here, I'll drop the rope back down for you."

"Okay." Sam sliced off the two feet, set it aside. Then he fashioned a doubled wrap around Dean's chest through his armpits, tied his wrists together, tied them to his brother's belt. He thought the leather coat would reduce friction, too, offer the rope a better bite. "Okay, Dad!"

"Alright, I'm going to take up the slack. Get a good grip on him and lift him up."

Sam blew out a heavy breath, knowing all the maneuvering was going to hurt like hell. But there simply was no other choice.

Dean roused again as Sam levered him up, worked his way in behind, then wrapped both arms around his brother's chest. "Okay, I gotta get you up off the ground. Sorry, bro." Dean arched away from him as Sam began the effort to go from ground to standing. "Hold still! Don't move! Just—let me find my feet. Dean, easy. Take it easy." He wobbled, but got his legs under him, wrestled his brother upright. Dean was dead weight. "Dad! Take up the slack!"

"Turn him so his back is against the wall, keep his toes off the wall so he doesn't bang the leg too badly. Guide him up, Sammy! Keep him steady!"

"Go ahead!"

Dad began to pull on the rope. Sam felt the pressure, the first bit of movement. He turned Dean to face him, then let Dad do the work. Forcing Dean up the wall wouldn't accomplish anything. "I'm at his waist!" Sam called.

"Okay. Good job, Sammy! Just keep him steady."

Sam caught Dean at his right knee, continued to guide him as Dad pulled him up. "I'm at his ankle. He'll be too far up in just a minute."

"Okay . . . man, how much does this kid weigh? He's solid muscle . . ."

"I can't reach him anymore!" Sam called. He pulled the flashlight out of the dirt, aimed it upward. Dean hung from the rope like a side of beef, head lolling. "He's almost up!"

"—got 'im!"

Half of Dean disappeared over the lip of the hole, then his legs were dragged up and over. Sam winced in sympathy. A moment later he heard a garbled outcry. The storm had finally passed. Sam could hear his father talking to Dean, keeping up a stream of words in a tone intended to calm his son. Sam wondered how much was for his father's benefit.

The rope wouldn't be thrown down for him until Dad was sure Dean was clear and okay. Sam picked his soaked coat off the ground, shook it out, slipped his arms into the sleeves. He swept the floor of the hole with the flashlight, collected Dean's, saw nothing else. His own phone was somewhere up top with both guns. Dean's cell he'd tucked into his pocket.

"Sammy! I'm throwing the rope down and a pair of leather gloves. This end's knotted to a tree. Can you climb out? I need to work on Dean."

The rope slapped down along with the gloves. Sam tucked the flashlight into his pocket, pulled on the gloves, took a firm grip on the rope and began the laborious climb, hand-over-hand, digging toes into the side of the hole. Several times he swung loose when toeholds were lost, but he kept pulling himself upward.

Once he hit the lip of the hole, his father caught the rope. "I gotcha! Hang on, Sammy!"

He scrambled up as his father gave three tremendous pulls. He was over, but let his father pull him farther from the edge so he was well clear. He let go, heaved himself to his feet. "How's Dean?"

"He's in shock. I used some chemical heat packs, but we need to get him to a hospital."

Sam was stunned. They never went to hospitals. "Really?"

In diffused lantern light, his father's eyes were steady. Sam saw a glint in them. "Any fool can fall down a sinkhole and break his leg. Don't need to make up a story for that."

"No, but they might wonder what the heck we were doing wandering through a forest in the middle of a thunderstorm."

"Car wreck," Dad explained. "Dean hit his head, was disoriented, wandered off. Took us a while to find him. It's not hard, Sam. Now, you done talkin'? Let's get your brother to the car."

With Dad on one side, Sam on the other, they got Dean to the Impala with a minimum of fuss, though Dean fussed as he roused from unconsciousness to pain upon arrival.

"Save it," Dad suggested. "You're not makin' sense."

"You're okay," Sam said, who felt that was a far more sympathetic statement.

"Back seat," Dad said. "You, too, Sammy. I want you to keep an eye on him." Sam climbed in, turned, nodded, and Dad began to lower Dean down. "Watch his leg, Sam."

"Got it."

Eventually they arranged a muttering Dean across the back seat, splinted leg cradled between seat back and his good right leg. Sam took Dean's head and shoulders into his lap, tried to settle him as comfortably as possible. With the door open, the dome light illuminated the interior. Dean's eyes were half open, hooded. Mud marred one cheekbone. His mouth moved as he murmured something.

"Feet clear of the door?" Dad asked. "I'm going to leave the dome light on so you can keep an eye on him as we go."

Sam checked. "He's good."

"Okay." Dad closed the door, climbed into the front behind the wheel. "How's he doing?"

Sam looked down at his brother. Dean's color had improved. He had the whole James Dean thing going with tumbled hair, sleepy eyes, all snugged up in a leather coat with collar upturned against the clean lines of his jaw. "Good look," Sam murmured, smiling.

The Impala's engine was rumbling. "What?" Dad asked as he backed the car around. One arm was slung across the front seat as he gazed out the back window.

Sam raised his voice. "He looks good in your coat."

Dad frowned a little, glanced down at his oldest. The dome light painted the angles and hollows of what had been a pretty boy now maturing into a handsome man. He smiled, face softening. "Yeah. He does. Reminds me of his mother." Dad's smile broadened. "Maybe he should keep it."

A few minutes down the road, Sam began to laugh.

"What?" Dad called. He turned down the radio. "He okay?"

"Oh yeah. He's singing."

"Singing?"

Sam was still laughing. "It's Kumbaya."

"What the hell is Kumbaya?"

"Well," Sam said, "it's not mullet rock!"

Dad turned up the volume and blasted the car with Led Zeppelin. "There's your mullet rock, Sammy!"

Sam patted his brother's chest. "He's probably going to disinherit you over this."

"—ohh lorrrrd, kumbayaaaa . . ."


	10. Chapter 10

Dean had given up on 'good clothes' years ago. It just didn't make sense. Nothing they did required 'good clothes.' Because monsters didn't give a damn what you wore, and you tended to get blood—or ichor, guts, or just plain ick—all over the clothes anyway, which meant they remained stained even after washing, or got tossed, so why on earth would you lug around anything that constituted 'good clothes' when you might need the space in your duffel for extra ammo?

Which is why he was disgusted that he stood before the mirror tying a tie and attempting to make himself look presentable.

It was one thing with chicks. Sure, they wanted someone clean, and he excelled at showers—you kinda learned that when you got back to a motel stinking of ew de monster—but most of the chicks he picked up weren't into inspecting every inch of his clothing (most preferred him out of them), and he'd sure never hooked up with any who expected him to wear a freakin' tie.

Well. Good enough. He'd actually combed his short hair into something approximating a part, despite his inclination to just run a hand through it post-shower; and he wore a khaki twill shirt where the stain was on the back, not the front, and the red-brown knit tie—Sam referred to it as burgundy—was knotted into submission; and his jeans . . . well, that was the best he could do. He had nothing approaching 'dress slacks.' He had jeans.

Jeans, fortunately, hid various stains far better than twill shirts. Or burgundy ties, probably, though he'd never worn a tie on a hunt. It was Sammy who insisted he have one, who said that you couldn't swear there'd never be a monster who didn't attend the opera.

Dean rather thought anyone who attended the opera was likely to be a monster.

He'd asked Sam if the teacher was male, or female, all the associated intel. Sam's reply had been less than forthcoming, other than to state the teacher was female. Dean preferred to have more to go on than just gender. 'Hot,' or 'grandmother' told a guy a lot, but Sam was too nervous to go there. Sam had just flapped his hands and said Ms. Abernathy was 'cool.' But mostly he was extremely nervous, and an extremely nervous Sam, who only appeared when girls or teachers were involved, never monsters, was not going to give him much.

_You owe me, Dad. You owe me big-time._

Because Dad was conveniently out of town, when Sam's school required that a close family member over the age of twenty-one attend a conference.

Dad was out of town. Dean was twenty-one. Dean was thus elected by u-Sam-imous decision.

Sonofabitch.

He looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He knew what to do with that face with a young, hot teacher. He was not so certain what to do with it with a grandmotherly type. Sam was the one who'd cornered the market on melting older hearts. He just had those eyes, and that whole knitting-of-the-brows thing, and the earnest appeal of someone who actually meant what he said . . . which was the Key to Sam, Dean knew. His brother really did mean the things he said.

_And he wants to go to college. Who the hell am I to stand in his way?_

Much as he wanted to. Much as he wanted to get right up into Sam's face—which was a little harder, now that Sam had sprouted yet another freakin' inch and was up to 6'3"—and tell him he should stay put with his family—his family, dammit!—and do what he'd been trained to do all of his life.

But for all Dad seemed to have a backbone of iron and could withstand all of Sam's wheedling and puppy dog stares, Dean always caved. It was a constitutional weakness of which he was not proud. Probably he should work very hard to eradicate this weakness. But it was what it was, and Sam was leaving anyway.

Dean wondered what would happen if he told the teacher that Sam was unsuited for college. That maybe in a year or two he'd be ready. That he was socially maladjusted, wholly dysfunctional, and required counseling to truly become the kind of citizen that college, and the world at large, needed.

Well, hell. Any teacher worth his or her salt would know by now that Sam was ready, and that Dean was merely throwing out his own insufficiencies as an excuse to keep his brother down on the farm.

"Dean." Sam, from the other room.

He ran a hand over his jaw. Freshly shaved, Old Spice applied . . . plus hair with an actual part; pressed shirt, tie; boots from which he had removed monster ick. What more did Sammy want?

Well. Sammy wanted a lot.

"Dean!"

Okay, anxiety ramping up.

Dean sighed, flipped off the bathroom light, appeared before his brother. "Happy, now?"

Sam's brows jumped. "You look—presentable."

"I look freakin' awesome," Dean corrected. "Let's get this done. How far is school?"

Dad had the Impala. "Two blocks," Sam replied. "Easy walk."

"I could boost a car."

That seemed to ratchet up Sam's anxiety. "We're walking, Dean! We're not going to show up at school in a car that could belong to the science teacher, okay?"

"Your science teacher lives in a run-down neighborhood inhabited by losers?" Dean asked, then waved a hand. "Don't answer that."

Because Sam would immediately respond that the Winchesters were not losers, and would embark upon all the reasons they weren't, which was not what teachers wished to hear, anyway. Besides, Sammy wanted to go to college, which pretty much proved he was not a loser.

Neither was he, Dean knew; and he did know that. But what Winchesters did would not register on any kind of scholastic aptitude test, and likely would not impress a high school teacher in a parent-teacher conference, especially when the parent was absent and the only relative present over the age of twenty-one was a wise-ass older brother.

_So don't be a wise-ass._

Dean was not certain that was even possible. It was his default setting.

Dad said he was born with a smart mouth. Dean replied that at least part of him was smarter than Sammy.

"Can we go?" Sam asked.

"Chill," Dean said. "Besides, she's talking to me, not you. You don't even have to go."

Sam said, "But God knows what you might tell her. I have to be available to clean up whatever mess you make."

Dean, tasting ashes, stared at him.

Sam had the grace to realize what he'd just said. "Oh God. I didn't mean it like that!"

 _Yeah. You did._ Dean shrugged. "Let's go."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"You got two choices," Dean said. "We can wait until Dad gets back, which means then you've got to tell him you're leaving; or I can go talk to this woman and sing your praises. Or make a mess you get to clean up. You figure it out."

Sam was close to tears. "I'm sorry."

He was. Sammy always was. He wanted so many things. He wanted them with a terrible need. Sam Winchester desired so badly to be other than what he was.

Can you be what you are because someone made you that way? Can you be really good at something you don't want to do?

Had he, himself, ever wanted to be other than what he was?

No. Not before Sam, in his own Sammish way, had questioned his own goals; and by that had made Dean think about what his brother needed.

What maybe he needed.

No. In the immortal words of Popeye, Dean knew the truth.

 _I yam what I yam_.

And Sam's teacher would have to like it or lump it. This wasn't about Dean going to college. Dean didn't have to prove anything about himself. Just explain that yes, his little brother had the competence, and the dedication, to do what he said he intended to do.

Straight As, and he'd aced the SAT. Anyone who looked into the earnest puppy dog eyes would know what was in Sam's heart. If all it took was his older brother swearing that he believed in Sam, he was happy to do it. Because he did believe in Sam, the way he believed in no one other than his father. He believed in Sam more than he believed in himself.

And when they'd walked the two blocks, and Dean shook the hand of the middle-aged teacher—attractive, but not hot; but neither was she a grandmother—and he'd answered all her questions and ventured a few off-hand comments of his own, he was pretty sure he'd done what he could for Sam.

Until she said, as he headed toward the door, "Wait."

He turned back, thinking about Sam on the other side, waiting in the hall to see if he needed to clean up Dean's mess.

"Your father," Ms. Abernathy said. "Sam has avoided all my questions about him. Does he even know Sam wishes to go to college?"

"He knows," Dean answered easily, because he thought it very likely true.

"And you?"

Dean stared back at her. "I just spent forty-five minutes telling you how I thought Sam was a good fit for any college that might have him. And any college should have him."

"What about you?" she asked. "Sam says you never went to college."

"Sam getting in depends on my academic career? Because if so, he'd better hang it up right now. And I don't think that's what you want."

She smiled. "No. It's not what I want."

"Well?"

She met his eyes without flinching. "I see untapped potential. And I'm not talking about Sam."

"I am," he said. "That's the only reason I'm here."

She set her pen down. "All right."

"My brother's a smart kid."

"Your brother's a genius," she said. "I mean, an actual genius. And that makes me wonder what his older brother might be."

Dean hitched a shoulder in a casual shrug. "Jack of all trades. Master of one."

The misquote got her attention. Her brows lifted. "'One?'"

He gave her his best smile—and meant it absolutely. "I'm an awesome big brother."

But only because he had an awesome little brother.

"Mr. Winchester . . . ." And then she seemed to let go whatever she'd intended to say. "Thank you for coming in."

"Will he make it?" Dean asked. "Will someone want him?"

"Oh, I don't think it's a matter of will anyone want him. It's a matter of Sam deciding where he wants to go. He has many choices."

Dean smiled. "Good. He deserves to have choices."

"And you?" she asked. "What about your choices? You're a very young man, you know. "

"Not so young," he said, because hunters aged quickly. "And I made my choice a long time ago."

"But it's not the one Sam has made for himself."

Dean looked into her eyes. She was a civilian, but maybe, just maybe, she understood his brother.

"He has a hungry soul," Dean said, and thought it was enough.

He opened the door and walked out of the room.


	11. Chapter 11

Sam smiled, because he was supposed to. He shook the principal's hand, accepted the diploma, glanced briefly out at the audience. All those proud parents and grandparents, and bored siblings.

Well. He was lacking the former, maybe, but he definitely had the latter.

Dean was wearing his knitted burgundy tie again, and the khaki twill shirt, and jeans, because all he had were jeans. And his big lace-up work boots, because that was also all he had for footwear. And Sam wondered, as he went down the stage steps and returned to his seat in the auditorium, why neither of them owned anything other than one pair of shoes.

Well, scratch that. Sam had a pair of cleated soccer shoes tucked away in his duffel. Thing was, with the last growth spurt—now just over 6'4" and the tallest Winchester in the history of Winchesters, Dad said—he'd outgrown the soccer shoes. It was time to get rid of them, donate them to a thrift store so some other kid could use them. It's how he'd gotten them in the first place, forking over $6 to Goodwill.

Yeah, Dad gave him an allowance, and Dean slipped him some bucks any time he had a win at pool or poker, so he probably could afford another pair of soccer shoes, but sports really wasn't on his radar right now. Not even if it only cost him $6 for another pair of shoes, which he kind of doubted was possible these days with his height, hands, and feet. Because even $6 could go to food. Sure, he'd scored a full-ride scholarship to several schools, but that didn't cover "incidentals," as the admissions packets called any expenses outside of tuition, a meal plan, dorm, and books.

He knew damn good and well Dad wouldn't be paying for his cell phone, once he left. He needed it for hunting; he didn't, Dad would declare, need it for school. Because school wasn't the 'family business.'

Sam Winchester, Esquire. That's what he'd be when he received his law degree. Or maybe Samuel, which sounded more adult. But one thing it wouldn't be was 'Sammy.'

Little Sammy Winchester. No one could call him that anymore.

He sat in the sea of fellow students and didn't even listen to the names being announced. Not many came after Winchester anyway. He and Dean had been doomed to always be near the end of everything during roll-call, or they were asked to answer questions. Now and again the teachers flipped the class roster, which Sam loved because he always knew the answer. Dean hated it because either he never did, or he didn't want anyone to think he did.

It was easier for Dean, for reasons Sam had never been able to fathom, to let teachers believe he was less intelligent than he actually was.

No, he wasn't book-smart like Sam. But nobody had the street smarts his big brother did. That counted for a lot, Sam figured. It kept them alive.

Dean didn't sit with all the parents and family members. He hovered at the back of the auditorium, stationed close to the doors, as if he needed an escape route. And maybe he did; Dean, like Dad, always knew where the exits were. Possibly Dean suspected a monster might be hiding in the auditorium, because he'd been nervous as he walked Sam to Commencement.

Or maybe that was just because Dean felt this was Dad's job, to attend his youngest son's graduation.

Or maybe, Sam's intuition told him now, it was because Dean never made it to his own graduation, because he dropped out before he could.

The principal said something into the microphone and everyone around Sam surged to their feet cheering and whooping and flinging their mortar board caps—those stupid, ugly hats with tassels—into the air.

Sam didn't. Sam got up, made his way a few seats down—with a name at the back end of the alphabet he'd been seated close to the aisle—and left them all behind. They had parties to go to, maybe even family celebrations in restaurants. Sam didn't know.

He had . . . no father in attendance, is what he had. And a brother who didn't want to be there.

Samuel Winchester, high school graduate. And a whole freakin' year late, thanks to Dad. He was older than everyone in his graduating class. He'd be older than everyone in his freshman class at Stanford.

Stanford. Ivy League. Just like Bobby had suggested.

As he walked, Sam looked briefly at the crisp, heavy paper in his hand. Then he glanced up, saw his brother waiting by the big bank of push-bar doors. He didn't look nervous anymore. He leaned slightly, one shoulder set casually against the wall, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. And he was smiling.

It wasn't the cocky grin that annoyed adults and had chicks giggling to one another or practically fainting. It was just a quiet smile that indented his cheeks a little and put the faintest of creases at his eyes. And the expression in his eyes . . . well, Sam had learned to read them many years before. And what he read now was pride.

Pride. In his little brother.

For a moment, Sam returned the smile. It set a little glow in his stomach, that look, that pride. And then reality came rushing back, and he saw again the absence at his brother's side. The smile slid off his face.

The pride he wanted, for just one night, was his father's.

Sam stepped by his brother, hit the push-bar, shoved open the door and stepped into the auditorium foyer. When Dean followed, Sam turned on him, thrust the diploma into the air and gestured with it.

"One more summer. That's it."

The smile was gone from Dean's face, too. "I know, Sammy."

He'd always been able to read Dean. But right now, he couldn't. How was that possible? Dean had a vast array of masks, but he never wore any against Sam.

Until now.

"I want to get drunk," Sam said. "I want to go back to that shit-hole of a rental house, and I want to drink whiskey like you do, and I want to get drunk."

"We can do that if you want," Dean said after a long moment in which he continued to wear a mask, "but I thought I'd take you out to dinner. Celebrate a little. Nothin' fancy—" he shrugged a little, eloquently stating that of course Winchesters couldn't afford anything fancy, "—but, you know. Something a little better than a burger joint."

Sam unzipped his rented gown, bundled it up, dumped it onto a table in the foyer. Then he pulled off his idiot hat and dropped it on top of the gown. He didn't care that he was supposed to keep the tassel as some kind of marker for his rite of passage. He didn't freakin' care.

His rite of passage had begun eighteen years, six months before.

"You like burger joints," Sam said.

Dean shrugged again. "Yeah, but this isn't about me. There's a little Mediterranean place I found. It's walking distance. All kinds of healthy food."

Sam pushed his way through the bank of big plate-glass doors into the warm air of late spring. "If we've got some Lucky Charms, or Mac-n-Cheese, in the house, that's good enough. I just want to get drunk."

"Sammy, look—"

Sam just walked on. Dean would catch up, or he wouldn't. Sure, Dean had the second set of keys to the house—but Sam knew exactly how to break in. And he knew where the whiskey was.

Dean caught up. Sam had three inches on him now, but he hadn't quite yet sorted out how to assemble his legs into anything approximating graceful movement. Dad had been riding his ass about it, too, telling him he needed to start jogging every morning, to learn how Sam worked again. And a small part of him knew Dad was right. Dean had grown up all of a piece, at an even rate. He'd gotten broader over the past few years—and Sam knew from experience how much power he packed in those big shoulders—but not taller. He knew how his body worked. Dean's body was an incredibly efficient machine. Sam was still a work-in-progress.

Dean hadn't outgrown his shoes for years. Sam figured he'd better scrape up the bucks to buy some new ones, even if they were only new-to-him, because his toes weren't happy.

Shoes were probably on the list of 'incidentals.' Or else they weren't, because Stanford Admissions would probably assume that even someone who needed an academic scholarship to attend would nonetheless have enough money to buy shoes.

Yeah. He'd need to find some kind of part-time job over the summer. Dad would bitch, but unless Dad planned to pay him minimum wage for all the hours he spent researching or putting down monsters, Dad would just have to keep his mouth shut.

Sam felt a stab of remorse. Because Dad did sometimes take actual paying jobs. So did Dean. Neither had any trouble scoring jobs in Mom-n-Pop garages for under-the-table pay. These days new cars came with computers, and a lot of young mechanics were going to school to nab jobs in franchise shops. A lot of them, Dean said, knew next to nothing about classic cars. That's where the Impala actually covered part of her gas expenses. Dad or Dean pulled up at a small shop in that black beauty, and were soon buried in the engine or talking pistons and valve heads and drivetrains with the garage owner, who promptly hired them on the spot.

Sam didn't want to be a mechanic. He knew next to nothing about what was under the Impala's hood, and Dad and Dean didn't care because one or the other of them always had her back.

Her. It never failed to amaze Sam that his father and brother assigned gender to a car.

Dean didn't say anything the rest of the way back to the rental house. Sam didn't, either. He just waited while his brother unlocked the front door, and then he went to the beat-up kitchen cabinet where Dad kept the whiskey, pulled down the half-full bottle and two glasses. He had a beer now and then, but whiskey wasn't his poison.

Tonight, yeah.

He carried bottle and glasses into the front room, poured liquor, held one of the shots out to Dean. His brother had already pulled off his tie, hung it over a door knob. Dean gazed at the offered glass a moment, then took it.

The mask, again. Sam didn't know how to react. He stared a question at his brother.

Dean lifted the drink into the air, said "Here's to the graduate."

Since they were coming from Dean, Sam accepted the congratulations. He tapped his glass against Dean's, took a breath, then slammed back the whiskey.

When he could speak, he gasped, "Holy crap! That burns all the way down! I think my gut's on fire!"

"Yup," Dean agreed.

"Why do you even drink this?"

"For the burn." And Dean smiled behind his mask.

"How can anyone drink enough of this crap to get drunk?"

"It's like walking," Dean explained. "One foot in front of the other. Only it's whiskey instead."

Sam sat down on the couch. His eyes had actually watered when the fumes hit them. But he was determined to see it through. He poured himself another shot, downed it, too. If a little more slowly.

Dean pulled the armchair close to the coffee table, took a seat. He knocked back his whiskey, didn't even so much as blink. But then Dean had been drinking for a fair number of years by now. Sam didn't recall ever seeing him truly drunk, though. A good buzz, yeah; and he came home in the early hours sometimes walking just a shade too carefully, but he'd never been falling-down drunk.

"That's when you smell of perfume," Sam noted.

Dean's brows shot up. "What?"

"When you come home after being out with a girl."

"Oh." Dean's half-smile suggested relief. "Well, yeah. It's all part of the deal, Sammy. She gets a little Old Spice from me, I pick up a little perfume from her. Swapping of all the essences, you know?"

"You make that sound dirty."

Dean grinned, and this time it was cocky. "It's a beautiful, natural act, Sammy. Maybe when you're forty, you'll know what I mean."

Sam poured himself another drink.

Dean watched him swallow. "Why do you want to get drunk?"

"To forget," Sam said, knowing it sounded melodramatic and cliché, but it happened, in this instance, to be the truth.

Dean's grin disappeared. His gaze unfocused into a thousand-yard stare somewhere beyond his brother's head, and Sam realized Dean wasn't thinking about Dad and missed graduations. He was thinking about something decidedly else.

"Sometimes it even works," Dean murmured, and then he poured a double and knocked it back with an efficiency that spoke of practice.

Sam felt the whiskey. He just wasn't used to it. Two beers he felt, if he even got that far. But this was . . . well, this was definitely different. But it's what he wanted. So he drank a little more and sensed a new lassitude in his body, a looseness in limbs that had him blinking slowly at the face across from his.

"Dad says you look like Mom."

That got Dean's attention. "What?"

"He got drunk one night . . ." Sam raised his empty glass, " . . . and said you look like Mom. Dunno where you were. Probably out with a chick. But he took this picture from his wallet, and he showed me. And you do." Sam waved a hand. "I mean, she's a she and you're a he, but you know what I mean. An' he said . . . he said he was proud of you. That you never let him down."

A muscle jumped in Dean's taut jaw. "I've let him down plenty of times."

"Not for real . . . not for real real. He chews yer ass sometimes, but it's diff'rent."

Dean's tone was scornful, but Sam knew it wasn't meant for him. "Have another, Sammy."

So he did, if only because that's not what Dean meant, either. "Yer like a curse box, kinda."

Dean stared at him. "I'm a curse box?"

"Kinda." Sam wanted to be clear on that. "You're all locked up tight with all the bad stuff inside, an' yer afraid if anyone else unlocks it, bad stuff'll come out." He shook his head. "'s wrong, Dean. There's good in there. You've seen bad stuff, but yer not bad. Yer good." He stared at his brother, fearing he wasn't being clear. "Yer good, Dean. Really good. Better'n anyone. Better'n Dad."

The muscle jumped in Dean's jaw again. "So, do you want Lucky Charms, or Mac-n-Cheese?"

"Don' deflect." Sam waved that away with a sweep of his arm. "'s what you always do. You should lissen, Dean."

"Yeah, well . . . I don't want to."

"I know you better'n anyone. Better'n Dad, even. 'Cuz I'm the only one you let get close to you. But earlier . . . at school—" Sam poked the air with a finger, "—you put on a mask. Firs' time you ev'r done it with me. How come?"

Dean stared at him. "You always were an emo little bitch."

"Don' shut me out. Not me. An' tell me why it makes you uncomf'ble to have me say yer good."

Dean took up the whiskey bottle, poured himself a double, downed it.

Sam said, "You need t' be drunk to answer?"

His brother said, "Maybe I just won't answer at all. Because this is a stupid conversation. Fortunately you won't even remember it in the morning."

"I will." Sam tapped his head. "What goes in stays in."

Now Dean looked amused. "Say that when you wake up in the morning with your first whiskey hangover."

"You gonna tell Dad?"

"What—that you got drunk? No. Why would I?"

"'Cuz you tell 'im everything."

"Uh, no, I definitely do not tell Dad everything."

"Oh. Like, sex." Sam waved a hand. "I mean about me. Because he always knows what I've done."

"If Dad came home tomorrow, I wouldn't have to tell him you got drunk tonight. Trust me. And no, I do not tell him everything you've done. First of all, I don't have to, because you can't lie your way out of a paper bag; second, you always answer when he asks what you've been doing; and third, he's a dad. Dads know things."

He was too drunk to be seriously angry, but a small wave of it slapped against the shore nonetheless. "He didn't know tonight was my graduation. Or he didn't give a damn. And that's worse." He stared at Dean, felt the sting of tears and hated himself for it. "You came. You stayed home from the hunt so you could come."

"Sammy . . ." Dean pulled out his phone. "I should have played this for you earlier, before the ceremony. I just thought it would piss you off, and I didn't want to spoil it." He turned on the phone, pressed a button, then set it down on the coffee table.

Sam blinked as his father's voice sounded.

'Sammy. I'm sorry. I meant to be there. I planned to be there. But I hit a deer on the way home. The Impala's not running. I'll get her repaired, be home by tomorrow night. Oh, and in case you don't believe me—and I guess I wouldn't blame you if you didn't—I'm sending a photo. Check it out. Impala—1, Deer—0. And Sammy—congratulations. I'm proud of you, son.'

Sam stared at the phone. The sting in his eyes was back.

Dean got up, rounded the coffee table, sat down on the couch beside his brother. Bumped Sam's shoulder with his own. "You gonna look at the picture?"

Sam swallowed heavily. "No. The whiskey's kind of—moving around. That picture might make me puke." And then the first tears fell. "I just want to be normal. Is that so wrong?"

Dean slung a heavy arm around his shoulders. "You'll never be normal, Sammy. You're too you. But no matter where you go, no matter what you do, you'll always be a Winchester."

"Dad's gonna kill me when I tell him."

"Maybe. But tonight he's proud of you, and that's what counts." Dean's arm tightened. "Live in the moment, Sammy. Live in the moment."

"I'm really drunk."

Dean unslung his arm, leaned forward, poured whiskey into two glasses, gave one to Sam. "I'm going to make some dinner. Then we can eat, drink, and be merry—because tomorrow you most certainly will think you've died. Or wish you had." He got up, went off into the kitchen. "How's Mac-n-Cheese sound? I'll even add some bacon."

But Sam didn't answer. He picked up Dean's phone, switched it off speaker, held it to his ear and listened to the replay. To his dad's voice.

And lived in the moment.


	12. Chapter 12

The pool cue cracked up and whacked Dean in the mouth. And it pissed him off to no end, because he never should have let it get past his guard. But the same pool cue had also caught him at the base of his skull before it advanced upon his mouth, and he'd still been counting sparkles in his vision when it made contact with his lips.

Shit. He was going down.

And if he went down, it meant he was going to lose every last penny in his pockets, including tonight's take. And that was enough to stand him upright again, even if it cost him, and he managed to catch the freakin' cue stick on its third trip toward Winchester flesh.

He caught it, stopped it, wrenched it out of the hands of the guy who thought he had it made, and he flat waled on the guy and the friend next to him. Waled until the barkeep stuck a sawed-off shotgun up under his jaw and told him to get the hell out if he wanted to see morning.

Well. Okay. That English was plain enough.

The blonde he'd been flirting with all evening hung back against the wall, blue eyes wide and wet. He didn't know if she was crying for him getting beat on, for the guys he'd beat on himself, or just for general circumstances, which might have been a little more raw than she was used to. He didn't know. He hadn't even gotten to the point of exchanging names with her yet. He just knew that he wasn't taking her to bed; and that it was probably a good thing, because he hurt like hell.

Not that he'd ever say getting waled on would keep him from trying his damnedest to give a girl a very, very good time. He could cite instances where no complaints were issued, even if he had to grit his teeth or catch back a gasp of pain. It was a Dean Winchester mantra: Leave 'em begging for more, but not because he couldn't perform the first time out of the box.

However, a sawed-off shoved up into the fleshy part of his jaw was enough to make him think of things other than chicks. He hated to admit it, but the threat of buckshot through the top of his head was enough to cool the hottest of flames.

Okay, so the night was a bust. Well, the hot chick part of the night was a bust. He still had the money.

He'd walked. Dad had the Impala off elsewhere, and Sammy was back at the house.

Dean knew he could walk home. But he wasn't an idiot. He'd learned years before that some men refused to take a loss with good humor, and he didn't favor getting jumped in the parking lot. So he swallowed his pride, asked the barkeep if it was okay if he waited for a cab to collect him, and sat muzzily at the bar as the blonde deserted him, and the guys he'd beaten, who did have a car, were convinced to depart.

"Hey." The bartender pushed a half-beer in front of him. "You gonna be okay?"

Dean gazed at him in something akin to surprise, even if it was bleary. This was the guy who'd shoved a shotgun under his chin.

"Hey," the bartender repeated. "I gotta look out for my own. But you backed down mighty quick. And you had them fair and square on the table. You're good, really good, but I didn't see a hustle. At least—not an obvious hustle. So, you mislead them to thinking you're worse than you are . . . that goes with the territory. But you didn't set them up."

Well, he kinda had.

"And anyway, I thought maybe your hustle was something else, you know? With guys? Pretty boy like you." The barkeep raised his hands in a belaying gesture. "Hey. You are what you are. I'm a bartender, remember? I see all kinds of shit. If hustling ass ain't your thing, okay by me. And if it is—well, I ain't one to judge. "

Dean sucked down the half-glass of beer. He'd heard it before. Had been hit on before. He didn't understand it—he was just himself, with what God and John and Mary Winchester had cooperated on to scramble his genes so he looked the way he did—but he accepted that most women liked it, and some men. He even knew how to work it, with the women. With men, he did his best to ignore it. Hoped that was enough. Usually, it was. Sometimes, maybe, not so much. That's when a certain look, or even fists, helped.

Maybe because the barkeep was just looking at him, now, as another guy, even if he was half-drunk and displayed an array of bruises and a little bit of blood, rather than as a slice of prime rib, he said more than he meant to say. "Gotta dad, and a brother. Just want to go home. My way."

Barkeep smiled. "Okay."

A few other remained. Regulars, Dean figured. Maybe they'd take the side of the men who'd left; maybe they wouldn't. But the bartender seemed reasonable.

"Jus' waitin' for a cab," Dean said through his fat lip. "No trouble."

Barkeep went off to deliver fresh pitchers of beer, came back. "How much did you take off of them?"

Dean contemplated the man. Early 40s. Curly dark hair starting to recede. Mid-brown eyes. "No trouble," he repeated. "Jus' tryin' to earn money for my brother."

Barkeep's brows ran up. "You're shooting pool for your brother?"

Dean smiled. "Goin' to college. Fall. Goin' to Stanford."

"Stanford? You mean, where Tiger Woods went?"

Dean stared at him. "Golf? No. Jus'—class. I don't know what he's gonna do. Study. Whatever. I'm jus' doin' what I can to get him there."

"It's Ivy League, man," Barkeep said. "Presidents come out of Ivy League colleges."

And Dean flashed on a very discordant vision of his baby brother on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, taking the Oath of Office. Wait, wasn't that done elsewhere? Like, the White House? The Capitol?

Sammy Winchester, president of the United States.

Dean laughed, and the bartender presented him with another half-glass of draft. "Where's the cab?" Dean asked.

"It's a Saturday night," Barkeep answered. "We're not exactly on the main drag, here. Always takes them awhile. But someone'll be along."

Dean eyed him. He wondered if the $300 he'd taken off the other men would end up split among those guys, the barkeep, and the taxi driver. "Not an idiot," he stated.

The bartender dragged up a phone from under the bar, slammed it down before him. "Call whoever you like."

Dean took that for what it meant. But he pulled out his cell phone all the same, hit speed dial. When his brother picked up, he said his name.

Sam sounded sleepy, and wary. "Dean. Yeah?"

Oh. It was almost one a.m. He asked it anyway. "You available?"

And Sam, who wasn't really awake, mumbled, "You drunk?"

"A little," Dean answered truthfully. "But—"

"You can catch a cab," Sam said.

"Yeah, I can—I have—but—"

"Take the cab," Sam said, sounding more alert. "Dean—this is getting old. It's been two months, now. Either you're gone with Dad on a hunt, or you're out getting blasted. Listen, I know at graduation I got really drunk . . . but . . . that's not really me. And I've regretted it ever since. But Dad's gone with the car, and all I can do is walk over, which doesn't help you get back here, because I can't exactly carry you. Just take the cab. Okay? Please? I can't come, and I want you to get back here in one piece." He paused. "Dean. You okay?"

"I'm good," he replied; mostly, it was true.

"Look, if you need me to come, I will. But if you can catch a cab . . ."

"On its way." Which was true. "I'm good, Sammy. Go back to sleep."

"Dean, if you need me—"

"Go back to sleep, Sammy." And he disconnected.

Barkeep smiled. "Baby brothers, huh? Well, shouldn't be much longer till the cab gets here."

He hunched on the stool, propped himself up on an elbow, rubbed gently at the back of his head and gently tongued his split lip.

"How much did you take off them?" the bartender asked.

Dean frowned a little. "I didn't keep count."

"But enough to help your brother go to school."

Dean thought 'Stanford,' and 'Ivy League,' and saw dollar signs. "Yeah. Much as I can."

Barkeep nodded. "Yeah. All you rich kids. Takin' what you can off of hardworkin' blue collar guys like us."

Dean rose up from the stool, but the hands came down upon him.

"I'll lock the doors," Barkeep said. "Just don't kill him, or the cops'll be involved."

###

There was no cab. Only a world of pain, and being dumped outside the back door into the parking lot with not a penny left to his name, no wallet, no cell phone. He might as well be naked, though they had left him clothed.

Men only did that if they felt you had no options.

He'd walked, had no car. He'd called his baby brother, who was college-age. He'd hustled with no backup. He'd phoned the cab company suggested by the barkeeper.

They knew he wouldn't call the cops. These guys were pretty damn sure he didn't have the wherewithal, or the backup, to brace them. And he supposed he had it coming. He'd swaggered into a bar, set up shop at the lone pool table, hit on—or encouraged—a regular lovely, took $300 bucks off the locals.

He'd been sloppy, and they'd taken him down.

It was freakin' embarrassing.

He could stagger back into the bar. But what the hell would he do? He was outnumbered, without backup, pretty stove up . . . hell, he'd flat lost. He'd come out on top enough times to know what losing looked like. Sometimes you just took your licks. He'd dished them out. Maybe this time he had to take it.

But damn, it pissed him off!

He scraped himself off the asphalt. Tugged his tee and flannel shirt into something approaching an approximation of neatness. Hitched at his jeans and belt. Tried to straighten up.

Yeah, not so good. He remembered two boots against his ribs. Probably more.

Shit. That was $300 that would have gone to the Sammy Fund.

Well. He still had a couple of thousand. Maybe more; hadn't counted, lately. He supposed even a C-note was a plus, but he wanted to put together more. He wanted to tuck into his brother's duffel, when he left, an envelope fat with whatever he could win at pool, poker, even darts.

Once upon a time he'd shorted himself on food, if he thought Sammy needed more. Dad ran hot and cold; there were times he was flush and acted like a dad, and there were times he ran very hot, very obsessed, and so totally focused on the hunt that his kids took the back seat. Dad didn't mean for them to run short of food, but a guy in the thick of chasing down monsters, or hot on the trail of demon, might lose track of time.

Might lose track of the fact his youngest son was growing up to be a sasquatch, and was eating enough for three.

For a long time, Dean was, and looked, too young to be in bars, to shoot pool, play poker. He still got carded, but one thing he knew, even in a plethora of fake IDs, was that he was finally over the age of twenty-one. And once he got past the bouncer, if the bar had one; or once he got past the barkeep, his youth and looks stood him in good stead. Because no one expected a kid who looked 18-20 to handle a cue stick the way he did. And he didn't look like a card counter.

He won not because he cheated. He won because he was good. But he did know how to mislead others into thinking he was a mark.

Most took the losses pretty well, so to speak. They hated it, recognized they'd been had; but also recognized that they had underestimated their opponent. Usually, he caught some epithets, some bumps against his body as they departed, now and again a muttered threat. But few followed through, when it came down to brass tacks.

Now and then, though, someone did follow through.

No phone. He couldn't very well stagger back into the bar and ask very politely if he could call a different cab company. Or even his brother.

He was—four? five?—blocks away from the rental house. He had anticipated being out of town with Dad on his latest hunt, but Dad had said no, it was a one-man job, and maybe it was best he stayed with Sammy. Dean wasn't sure what that meant. Sammy was damn near nineteen; he didn't need a babysitter, and Dean had gone on too many hunts with his father to assume he was being discounted because of incompetence. You just didn't do incompetence with John Winchester.

Was it Sammy? Maybe. He was moody, butting heads more and more with Dad; and Dean didn't understand that, because he knew Sam was leaving. If you were leaving, didn't you try to savor every last minute with family? To remember them by?

But then Sam was butting heads more and more with him, too. Bitching about him going out so much, when all he was trying to do was score some extra cash. Yeah, so he took a few licks now and then; so what? He still came home with more money than bruises. And he wasn't about to tell Sam why. Just not necessary. Sam didn't need to know until he unpacked his duffel at Stanford and discovered the envelope. He'd know then. And he'd have to keep it, because he'd be thousands of miles away from his father and brother and wouldn't even know where they were, if he wanted to return the money. And he probably would, because that was Sam.

He was $50 down for the night. That was against the $250 he'd won, then lost. Well, hell. Win some, lose some.

God, but he hated losing.

He was upright. His clothes were as tidy as he could make them. He even walked mostly like he could, like he knew how to put one foot in front of the other; how he could stand up straight and ignore bruised, cracked, or even broken ribs. His lip had been split again, and bled as before. He tongued a tender gum. He'd sport some technicolor bruises on his face come morning.

But he was walking, dammit, and he could make it four—or was it five?—blocks to the crappy rental house.

###

"Dean! Dean!" He flinched when the giant winged bird came flying out of the darkness and oft-broken street lights to stoop down upon him. "Dean—God. Are you okay?"

Well, no—not so much. "Sammy?"

"Yeah! Dean, I've been looking all over! I mean—on foot. Did what I could. God, Dean, it's almost three a.m.!" And then, beneath a streetlight, Sam gasped out shock. "Holy crap—Dean—"

"—'m okay, Sammy."

"What the hell happened?"

"—losin' end, Sammy. Tha's all." Sam took his arm, attempted to help; all he brought was pain. "Sam—no. Okay? I got this."

Sam lurched beside him, so tall, so unfamiliar with his own great height and limbs. "God, Dean—what happened? What can I do?"

"Stop bein' a mother hen," Dean suggested. "Hey—I'm okay. I'm bunged up a little, I'll be slow for a few days, but I'm fine. "

It seemed to soothe Sam, who now fell in next to him at a slow walk. No longer did he try to grasp, to help, neither of which was wanted, because it would freakin' hurt.

"You gotta stop this," Sam said. "I don't know what's up with you, but it's got to stop. I know you like to go out, but Dean—this is more. You need to stop."

He wanted to say, _I've got a month, Sammy. Four whole weeks. And then you're gone. I should have been doing this for the last three years, not the last three months._

But of course he didn't say it. Said nothing at all. Let Sam think what he would. Even Dad.

"You're using protection, aren't you?" Sam asked, and it was so incredibly absurd and preposterous that Dean lurched to a halt and stared at him in astonishment. "Well," Sam said, and seemed to realize exactly what he'd just said, and to whom he'd said it, "I mean . . . you know?"

"'You know,'" Dean echoed. "Do you ever even freakin' listen to yourself?"

Sam hunched there as a stooped silhouette against the street light, swathed in a dark hoodie. "I thought . . . I mean . . . you're very busy, Dean. With girls."

Busy. He'd never heard it put that way before. Busy.

Chicks, God love 'em—and he certainly did—didn't provide the cash he needed for his Sammy Fund.

"I'm careful," he pronounced, hoping Sam wouldn't take the topic any further. He wasn't certain he could deal with what he was certain was his virgin baby brother asking whether he used protection.

"Was it a boyfriend?" Sam asked.

Dean frowned, trying to track. "What?"

"That beat you up."

Well, hell. He _was_ beaten up. He tried to sort out whether it was better to explain to Sam that he'd been beaten up by a jealous boyfriend, or by several guys he'd hustled.

Okay. That was easy. "Yeah. And he had a couple of friends."

"Why do you hit on the girls who already have boyfriends, you moron?"

"Because they hit on me?"

"Dean!"

He couldn't help it. He smiled and found first gear again, moving on down the sidewalk. "What can I say, Sammy? This face, this bod- hey . . . they can't help themselves."

"Dean, you're an idiot!"

Yeah. Yeah. Probably he was. "Nah," he said. "Just too pretty for my own good."

"Dean, you have to stop this!"

"Four weeks," he said, and wished he hadn't.

"Huh?"

"Nothin,' Sammy."

"What's four weeks?"

"Nothin,' Sammy."

"Why are you doing this, Dean? You're going out almost every night, getting into fights . . . what's going on?"

He wanted to shrug, but it hurt too much. "Just my nature, Sammy."

"It didn't used to be!"

No. Not before his brother decided to leave. Before he had only four weeks. "Yeah, well . . . we all grow up. We all change. Don't we?"

Sam reached out then. He seemed to have arrived at an understanding of his brother's pain, even if he didn't always grasp his feelings. He didn't sling an arm around him. He just reached in between chest and arm, closed a hand around his bicep, and squeezed briefly. "Dean. I need you to be okay."

He had no clue. No clue, what that did.

"I'm okay," Dean said. "I'll always be okay."

Because he would. Because he had to be.

Because maybe someday Sam would come back home.

"I'm okay," he repeated.

"You sure?" Sam asked.

Dean said yes. Because, really, it was the only possible answer.


	13. Chapter 13

Sam realized he stood in front of the baddest monster he'd ever faced, and the only weapons he had were words.

Except he didn't mean, or want, to use them as weapons. He just knew it was the way things would go.

The monster's name was John Winchester.

Except he was also Dad.

Sam had choked down dinner seated across from his father. Sidelong glances at his brother gave him nothing. Certainly no ammunition. He didn't even know if Dean realized what tonight was. If he had an inkling this was it.

Even now, the meal sat in his gut like a rock. If he went swimming, it would drag him right down to the bottom of the pool. And he'd drown.

He was drowning now.

He was afraid. He wasn't physically afraid of his father; Dad had never raised a hand to him or Dean. The Marine in him wielded authority with words, with tone, with posture, with expectations; and a flat declaration when they'd screwed up, when he was disappointed.

That was enough for Dean. It had never been enough for Sam.

No. He was afraid because his entire known world was ending tonight, even as a new one began the next morning.

Other kids went off to college with parents who drove them there, who bought them things for their dorm rooms, who probably cried about their sons and daughters being out from under their roof. The baby birds, with newly-fledged wings, departing the nest.

It was normal, that kids went off to college.

But he was a Winchester.

He'd rehearsed it when Dad and Dean were absent. His little speech. And he'd turned it over and over in his mind every night for weeks.

_It's an opportunity. Once in a lifetime. This is big, Dad. This is what I want. You want to chase a demon, to avenge Mom, that's okay. I get it. I've lived with you all my life, and I get it. I've seen what it's done to you. But we're not the same people. I've given you all of my adult life, such as it is, for hunting, but you don't need me. Not really. You've got Dean, and he wants to do this stuff. For him, it really is the family business. But it's not mine. I want—I need—something else. Something more._

And in his head, it never went well. Because the words would heat up, and tempers would flare, and they'd just wind up yelling at one another, like they always did.

He ate dinner, and volunteered to do the dishes even though it was Dean's turn. Dad didn't notice; he just nodded, wandered off into the front room with a bottle of Jack and a glass and a newspaper. Sam didn't even know if it was the local rag, or something from another town, something hosting a report of potential demonic activity.

Dean didn't wander off. He stood in the doorway between kitchen and the little dining alcove with a shoulder pressed against the jamb the way he did, looking all slouched and casual and lazy when he was far from it. He sported a new bruise on his left cheekbone. Its appearance that morning had made Sam unaccountably angry, because it was just another example of his brother's newfound recklessness.

Dean had always been aggressive. Sam had decided he'd inherited an extra dose of testosterone in the womb, because if his brother wasn't an alpha male, Sam didn't know what was. But usually Dean wasn't stupid reckless, like he'd become. Never on hunts, and usually not when he went to bars. But he'd gotten thrown around a little on the last salt-and-burn, and apparently his outing the night before had ended with fist hitting face. Or pool cue.

Sam dried the dishes, put them away. There weren't many; a few pots and pans, plates, bowls, some mismatched cutlery that had come with the furnished rental.

He turned and faced his brother, which was easier than facing his father. "What's up with you? What's going on?"

Dean said, "You tell me." And then he smiled a little, his crooked smile, only he was wearing a mask again. "No. Go tell Dad."

Yeah.

Sam left his brother in the kitchen, took himself into the living room, stood within an arm's length of his father in the recliner, and told him.

The clock didn't stop, but it sure ticked loudly. Maybe the world was biding its time before imploding.

"In the morning," Sam added.

John Winchester lowered the paper and looked at his youngest. "College."

Sam nodded. "Stanford. Full-ride scholarship. You won't have to pay a penny."

"Good thing," Dad said, "seeing as how I haven't _got_ a penny to pay."

This was not at all what Sam had anticipated. Where was the yelling? "So . . . you're okay with it?"

Dad folded the paper into a shape Sam had never witnessed. He set it on the end table beside the recliner, refilled his glass with Jack, swallowed half. "No," he said. "No, I'm not okay with it; and no, you're not going."

Okay, there was the first shot fired. Sam felt better. "I'm going."

Dad had dark eyes, unlike his sons. And when he stared you down, you stayed stared. "I need you, Sammy."

"You don't."

"I do."

"You've got Dean."

"Dean's ready," Dad said. "He's been ready for a long time. You're not, yet. I need you with me. I need to keep you safe."

It was a blurt of scorn, of surprise. "Safe? You keep a son safe by handing him a gun at the age of nine and telling him there are monsters in the closet?"

"Sometimes there are."

"Dad—I'm going. In case you haven't noticed, I turned nineteen in May. Legally, I'm an adult."

"In some states."

"You went to war at eighteen," Sam said. "I just want to go to school."

"This country was at war," Dad said, "and this family has been at war for almost twenty years, because a demon came into my house and killed your mother."

Sam drew in a breath, steadied himself. "You left a voicemail when I graduated, said you were proud of me."

"I was. Still am."

"Be proud of me now, Dad. I'm going to one of the top schools in the entire country, and then I'll go to grad school—"

"Grad school!"

Sam nodded. "It's for real, Dad. I'm going."

Dad flicked a glance beyond Sam, who realized Dean had at some point come into the room. "You knew about this?"

"I figured it out," was Dean's laconic answer.

"You didn't see fit to tell me?"

"It was for Sam to do."

Dad drank more whiskey, looked hard at Sam again. "You owe this family. You have an obligation."

"I have a life," Sam said. "My only obligation is to live it."

"I'm your father, and you owe me. You owe your brother."

Now it was familiar territory. Sam's temper warmed.

He stretched out an arm and pointed to Dean. "I owe my brother more than I've ever owed you. He was more a father that you ever were. He's the one who fed me most nights, who read to me, who helped me with homework, who walked me to and from school. Hell, I think he changed more diapers than you did! That's no way for a kid to live—and I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about Dean. You made him into an adult, into a father, when he was just a kid himself. Latch-key kids, Dad, the both of us. And when you did come home, how often were you hurt? Or drunk?"

Dad was cold, so cold. There was none of the expected combustion. "How I conduct my life is none of your concern, Sam."

"But it is," Sam insisted, trying to find his way through a very new minefield. "That's the way families work."

Now the spark jumped in Dad's eyes. "Normal families, maybe. You don't get it, Sam. You've never gotten it. We can't be normal. Yes, I've dragged you both from pillar to post from one end of this country to the other, and by God I wish it had been different. Even with Mary gone, I wish I could have found a little place for us, let you go to the same school every year." He slammed down the rickety foot-rest, sat on the edge of the chair with legs spread and hands gripping his knees. "I've screwed the pooch more ways than I can count, Sam; I'm not perfect. I'm human. I'm just a man trying to do the best he can in the midst of a war very few know even exists. I'm trying to keep us safe. I'm trying to keep you safe!"

"Safe from what?" Sam cried. "Nothing's chasing us!"

Dad looked away from him to Dean, as if Dean were privy to information Sam didn't have. Oldest son prerogative, maybe. His tone was odd. "You don't know everything."

"Then tell me!"

Dad stared at the floor a moment before lifting his eyes. "I need you with me, Sam. I need you with the family. I can't let you go to school."

Still no fireworks. But Sam refused to give ground, even if it all felt odd. "Why? There's no reason on earth I shouldn't go."

"I can't protect you there."

"You don't need to protect me, Dad! It's just school. I'll go to class, study, work a part-time job, maybe get an honest-to-God girlfriend, like normal guys. There's nothing dangerous about that. There's nothing to protect me from."

Something flickered in Dad's eyes. "There's always something to protect you from, Sammy."

"No. There isn't. It's what you tell yourself, maybe, but it's not true. You're just obsessed with making us perfect little soldiers, Dad, instead of allowing us to be our own persons. My last name may be Winchester, but I'm Sam Winchester, not John. Not Dean. And Sam Winchester is going to Stanford."

The voice remained calm. "I need you to stay, Sam."

"No, Dad. I won't."

"Sammy . . . " Dad drew in a breath, flicked a glance at Dean again, sighed. "There are things in this world you know nothing about. That I've kept from you and your brother because I still don't have all the information. Because—"

But Sam cut him off. "Is it about demons? You think that demon is chasing us? Chasing me?" He raised his arms, let them slap back down at his sides. "There's no reason on earth any demon wants me, Dad."

Dad braced against the recliner, pushed himself to his feet. He was a big man, John Winchester, an imposing man. He knew how to use his body to intimidate. But he didn't. He just stood there. "Sammy—I can't let you go. I need you to stay. I need to keep you safe. You go away, there's no telling what might happen. To you, or to anyone else."

"You and Dean will be fine."

"It's not about me and Dean."

Sam shook his head. "I'm going."

"Sammy—"

"I'm going."

"I will say this one last time," Dad said. "Stay."

"No."

"Son—"

"No."

For the first time in Sam's life, he saw John Winchester at a loss. He saw a trace of fear, a touch of pain, something that hinted at grief. But it didn't last. None of it lasted. Maybe it had never existed, any of it. Maybe he'd just wanted it to.

The ultimatum had arrived. Sam knew it. Thunder would roar and the walls would shake beneath the wrath of John Winchester.

But Dad simply said, and so very quietly, "You go, you stay gone."

He heard Dean say something on a blurt of shock, of utter disbelief, of denial. Sam didn't know what it was. He just knew that he couldn't spend the twelve hours before his bus left under the same roof as his father. Not now.

Sam turned and went into the bathroom to scoop up his toothbrush, shaving kit, shampoo. Comb. The 'incidentals.' Everything else was packed.

He heard Dean in the other room shouting incredulously, "What the hell was that?"

He wouldn't miss Dad. Not in the slightest.

But Dean?

Dean was the father he was leaving.

And then Dean was there in the door. "Sammy—"

Sam brushed by him, carried everything into the bedroom, dumped it into the duffel still open on the floor beside his bed. Two duffels. That's all his life came down to.

When he looked at his brother, he saw no masks. Just raw pain. "He didn't mean it, Sammy."

Sam felt no pain, raw or otherwise. He was hollow inside. "Of course he meant it."

"Well, he won't mean it in the morning."

Sam zipped the duffel closed. Yeah, Dean probably had known all hell was due to break loose, what with his worldly goods packed in duffels and left in the open.

He picked them up, dropped both on the bed, looked at his brother. "I expected him to yell."

"Yelling's never gotten him anywhere with you."

Sam grunted. "Maybe he should have figured that out years ago."

"He's afraid, Sammy."

Sam rejected that outright. "Dad's not afraid of anything."

"He's afraid of losing you."

Sam hooked one of the duffels up and settled the straps over one shoulder. "He just did. You heard him."

"Wait till morning," Dean said. "One last night."

Sam shook his head.

Something shifted in Dean's eyes. "Train? Or bus?"

"Bus."

Dean nodded, grabbed the other duffel. "I'll drive you to the station."

"You don't have to."

"Yeah," Dean said, "I do."

God, Dean . . .

He wanted to say something. But he didn't. He couldn't.

He just followed his brother out.


	14. Chapter 14

Dean drove Sam to the bus station. He parked, asked for the sixth time, he thought—or maybe it was seventh—whether Sam was sure he wanted to do this now. And said, too, for the sixth—or seventh—time that Sam could sleep in his own bed and leave in the morning.

To which Sam replied, with certain variations: "It's not my bed; it's a rental," and "I'm not staying under his roof another night."

All those motel beds, rental house beds. All those rental roofs.

Dean sat behind the wheel of the Impala and stared at the horn cap. He knew tension was pouring off him. He was stiff through every muscle in his body.

_What the hell do I say to the kid?_

He was clueless. There was too much he wanted to say. He fought an inner battle with it, wanting to be supportive, to send Sam off with the right kind of farewell; wanting more than anything to yell the way Dad hadn't, to scream at Sam that he was wrongwrongwrong.

But what he said was, "Will they charge you to change your ticket?"

"I don't know," was Sam's answer. "I've never taken a bus before. But if I have to spend the night in the station, I will. I can sleep on the bus."

_Jesus Christ, what can I say to the kid?_

He tried. "I know he's been hard on you."

"Don't start, Dean. Don't defend him."

Dean lifted his gaze from the horn cap to the darkness beyond the windshield. "I've got to."

"Because you're brainwashed."

"No. It's because I remember what he was before." Dean ventured a glance at his brother, saw the mutinous expression, looked away again. "We played catch, Sammy. He came home from working all day at the garage, and he didn't pick up a drink. He picked up a baseball, or a football, and we went into the front yard and played. Like normal. Apple pie, Sammy. I remember it, a little."

"Yeah, well, he's not that man anymore."

"And I'm not that kid anymore. It changed us both, Sam. That night."

"Dad changed you. If he'd left you to be a normal kid, you wouldn't be hunting." Sam sighed noisily, shifted in the seat. The Impala was a big car, but Sam was beginning to fill the shotgun seat more and more.

After tonight, less and less.

Dean always rode shotgun when Dad drove. He still would, but now there'd be no little brother in the back seat.

"Say what you want to say," Sam directed.

"I don't think you're wrong to want things," Dean told him. "I don't. I just think you should want different things."

"You want me to want what you want."

"Is that so bad?"

"Dad talks about keeping me safe," Sam said. "There's nothing safe about what we do! It's insane, Dean! Going to college is safe, not hunting."

"It's family," Dean said. "That night, when Dad shoved you into my arms and told me to take you out of the house, I knew what my job was forever. It's the same thing Dad's told me countless times. 'Look after Sammy. Look after your brother. Keep him safe, Dean.' Well, I can't do that from the road if you're in California."

"I'm going, Dean."

"I know you're going. I'm not stopping you. I'm just telling you my side of things for maybe the first time in my life." He glanced at his brother again, looked away. "It's my job, looking after you."

"But not forever!" Sam said. "It's not an older brother's job to look after his little brother forever."

"Of course it is, Sammy. Of course it is. You aren't an older brother, so you can't know. But it's true. It's forever."

Sam shook his head.

"I know you're going. I just don't want you to. And I wish there was something I could say that would make you change your mind."

"Dean, you've said this is what you want to do with your life. That you've wanted it for a long time, and you're happy doing it. Okay, I accept that—even if I think Dad's brainwashed you with his Marine training and his obsession. But this is what I've wanted to do for a long time . . . and I'll be happy doing it."

Dean ran his palm around the steering wheel. "Yeah."

Sam's tone lightened. "Maybe you need to look at it this way. If you really think it's your job to look after me—well, what if you got fired?"

"Fired?"

"You won't quit. I know that. So, what if you got fired?"

"You're firing me?"

"Well, you could look at it that way."

"You didn't hire me, Sam. You can't fire me."

Sam rolled his eyes. "It was just an example. Kind of a metaphor."

"I'm a person, not a metaphor."

"Never mind."

"Will you call me?"

"Of course I'll call you! I'm not sailing off the edge of the earth, Dean—which is not flat, by the way, in case you missed that fact in class."

Dean shot him a look of sheer incredulity.

Sam shrugged. "You missed a lot of school before you dropped out."

"I didn't miss that!"

"Do you know the Theory of Relativity?"

"'E equals mc squared.' I even know how to write the freakin' equation." He shaped it in midair with fingers, forming a capital E, an equal sign, small 'm' and small 'c,' and the numeral two. "See?"

"Do you know what it means?"

"That all things are relative," Dean said testily, "and that we are relatives. You and me." He paused. "You and I."

Sam smiled. "I just want to learn new things."

"You know shit no one else knows, other than maybe Bobby," Dean pointed out. "All that lore floating around in your head? I don't think there's room for anything else."

"There's a lot of room left."

"Well, I wish you were my idiot baby brother who had no room left in his head."

_Because you wouldn't leave._

"But then I wouldn't be me." Sam opened the door. Hinges creaked. "I'm going to go change my ticket."

Dean couldn't bear to look at him. "I'll bring your bags."

"Thanks."

He didn't watch his brother walk away. After a moment he got out of the car, opened the back seat, unzipped one of the duffels. Way down deep, probably under Sam's underwear, he stuffed the sealed and rubber-banded envelope containing all the cash he'd been able to score shooting pool, playing cards, throwing darts. Just under three grand.

_Should have started sooner._

He hadn't, though, because in the back of his mind he'd held out hope that maybe Sammy would change his mind.

"Moron," he muttered. And didn't mean Sam.

He rezipped the bag, pulled it out, grabbed the second one. Stood there holding it a moment, thinking suddenly of toys. And baseball gloves, and footballs.

All burned up in the fire.

Sam could put his whole life into two duffel bags.

"I did this," he said. "I let him be a kid as long as I could, despite the circumstances. Maybe Dad was right. Maybe I should have turned Sammy into a perfect little soldier, too, the way Dad did me. Because he'd want to stay."

And he heard Sam's own words, 'But then I wouldn't be me.'

He wanted more than anything for Sammy to be Sammy.

Or Sam to be Sam.

Dean hooked the first duffel over his shoulder, took the other one out of the car, closed the door with a swing of his hip and walked up to the office.

Sam met him just inside, smiling. "I got lucky. One's leaving for California in fifteen minutes."

"Lucky," Dean said, but couldn't manage a smile.

"Here," Sam said, "let me take my bags."

Dean stood there with nothing in his arms. He watched Sam walk the bags over to a bank of connected seats, shove them underneath. Then he came back.

They stood there staring at one another, and Dean realized other than when errands or hunts were involved, or a night out on the town, he had never learned how to say goodbye to his little brother.

Not this kind of goodbye.

"Thanks," Sam said, "for letting me go."

Dean summoned a dismissive shrug, even dredged up a smile this time. "What can I say? I'm an awesome big brother."

They managed a brief, awkward hug. Five minutes later Sam was on the bus, and Dean was in the Impala driving back to a house utterly empty of Sammy.

He stared hard into the darkness, not daring to blink. Waiting for the air to dissipate unshed tears.


	15. Chapter 15

Sam had grown up on the road, and now he was back on the road. But the big bus was nothing like the Impala. There, much as he bitched about always being stuck in the back seat when he was younger, that back seat was all his territory. Sammy Winchester's "house." A whole wide bench seat to himself, and two footwells, and the vast expanse of rear window and shelf. All his.

Dean only got half of the front seat. Oh, he called it "shotgun," the most highly-prized position in the car other than being behind the wheel, but it was still only half a seat. Sam had a whole one. Of course, it was harder to see where he was going, because the windshield was more distant and he had a brother and a father in the way, but he could watch unobstructed where they were coming from. Where they'd been the moment after they left it.

And where he'd been, a couple of hours before, was facing down his father and not being yelled at.

Not.

Sam didn't get it. That Dean hadn't said much during the debacle didn't surprise him, because Dean almost never got between him and Dad when they went at it. Sam had never understood if his brother didn't care if they fought, or just couldn't deal. Or maybe it was a highly complex admixture of emotions Dean himself couldn't understand, and therefore simply had no tools to use.

His brother, Sam had decided one day in school, was a living example of Chaos Theory. Which was, his teacher announced, a mathematical sub-discipline that studied complex systems.

In other words, Dean was a study of a study that studied complex systems. Which was far more complex in its complexity than merely being a single system. And if that linguistic turmoil wasn't a definition of a riddle inside an enigma wrapped up in a taco, then no such thing as Chaos Theory existed, and neither did Dean Winchester.

Sam thought their lives were pretty much chaos all the time, and he dared any mathematician to understand it.

And it struck him, as he sat in a seat vastly smaller than the Impala's, that his family might make a fascinating study for a psychology thesis. Winchester Interpersonal Relationships 101: How Not To Kill One Another, No Matter How Tempted, While In The Midst Of Ganking Monsters And Hunting Demons.

Of course, they'd label it science fiction. And likely remand him for psychiatric counseling.

_'And just how long have you been confusing fantasy with reality, Mr. Winchester? Do you hear voices?'_

_'Yeah, I do. My dad's. My brother's.'_

He'd been pleasantly surprised that he was allowed to keep his duffel bags with him in their own seat, rather than relegating them to storage compartments beneath the floorboards. But the bus was mostly empty, and he'd had no trouble finding two seats together that allowed him to sit by the window and stack his two duffels right next to him. At first it was merely an acknowledgment of convenience; and then he identified a knot of tension that had transformed into relief.

Winchesters never let anyone other than family handle their possessions. Certainly not duffels containing all manner of weapons along with mundane items such as clothing.

Resentment flickered. Another of Dad's rules.

But Sam's duffels did not contain weapons. He had put everything into the Impala's trunk beneath the false bottom.

Dad had said, 'You go, you stay gone.'

Yeah. He would. He had four years of undergraduate work ahead of him, followed by law school, followed by a career. He could stay gone forever.

_'There are things in this world you know nothing about. That I've kept from you and your brother because I still don't have all the information.'_

Sam shook his head. "Yeah, Dad, way to go—be all cryptic with your little mystery when all it's meant to do is control the moment. It's always control, with you."

He unzipped the duffel stacked on top, dug down for his admissions packet. He felt the paper and folder, grabbed it, tugged it out. With it came an envelope that fell to the floor.

Sam bent, recovered it, frowned. He didn't recognize it. And nothing was written on the outside to provide any identification.

Rubber-banded. Sealed. Sam pulled off the band, stuck a finger under the flap and tore it open raggedly, since the bulging contents had made it almost impossible to seal evenly.

His breath left him on a rush.

Money. A lot of it.

He glanced around sharply, saw no one looking. Then he thumbed through. Kept the envelope low and out of sight as he inspected the contents.

One hundred dollar bills. Some new and crisp, as if from bank; others creased, dog-eared, as if from a pocket.

And Sam all of a sudden knew what pocket those had come from. He thought it highly likely those bills smelled of bar, beer, and brother.

"Oh God . . ." he murmured helplessly.

Because Dean hadn't been avoiding him; hadn't been removing himself from the emotions of imminent departure; hadn't been saying, without saying anything, that he was disappointed in his brother's decision and therefore didn't want to spend much time with him.

All those months of relentless, almost nightly absences; of fights and bruises and blood.

For this.

For this.

He thought the pain in his chest must be what a victim felt when a monster shut a hand around a heart and squeezed.

I thought you were being Dad. More than ever.

No. Dean was being Dean.

He thumbed through the bills again, found something tucked in the middle. He fished it out, saw it was a note.

MAKE IT LAST, MORON. INVEST IT, OR SOMETHING.

And below the block printing, in smaller letters and a lot less neat:

Don't open any closets.

Don't open any closets? What the hell?

Oh. Yeah. Monsters.

He smiled, staring at his brother's printing. Then the smile faded.

Dean would open closets. He'd always open closets. And sometimes monsters would be in them, waiting for him.

###

When Dean got back to the house, he found the recliner empty—and the bottle of whiskey, too. Then he heard the flush of the toilet in the tacky little bathroom, water running, and a few moments later his father came into the front room. The edges of his dark hair were damp, and his face, as if he'd washed and dried but missed a few spots.

He didn't move like he was drunk. He moved like he was old. And his eyes were red.

"I took a call," Dad said. "There's a job two states over."

Two states over was California.

"East," Dad said, as if reading Dean's stray thought.

East was the wrong direction. East was away from Sam.

"We could go west," Dean suggested. "There are always hunts up and down the Coast."

Palo Alto wasn't far from the Coast. He'd looked it up. Sam wasn't the only one who could use a computer.

"We're going east."

"Dad—"

"I don't want to talk about it, Dean."

Dean folded his arms and fixed his father with a hard stare. "I do."

His father sighed. "Look, Dean, we've got a job to think about. Sounds like a pretty hard-assed poltergeist. Those things can be dangerous."

"I don't want to think about a job when you just kicked your son out of the family."

And the anger Dad hadn't shown Sam rose swiftly to the surface. Everything is skewed, Dean thought. Dad hadn't yelled at Sam, when he always did; and now he yelled at Dean, when he never did.

"God dammit, Dean, you have no clue what this is about! Sam and I have always butted heads, yes. We're both stubborn as hell, but there's more to this than that."

And now Dean was yelling, when he never did. Not at Dad. "Then tell me! Tell me, dammit!"

Something shifted in the dark eyes. "I can't. Not yet. I don't know enough."

"But you know something . . . is that it? Something big enough that you can't tell either of your sons about it even though it involves them? What the hell, Dad—is this some big family mystery?"

"It's bigger than just us," Dad answered. "But I don't know enough yet, Dean. When I do, when the time is right, I'll tell you."

"That's not good enough."

"That's all you're going to get. Now stand down, Dean. We're done discussing this. We've got work to do."

The impulse to stand down was very strong. It's what he always did. Took orders. Followed them. Never questioned them. He wasn't a son, he was a soldier.

He ignored the impulse, said what he wanted instead of swallowing it. "Family's more important than a job, Dad."

"Family is the reason for this job," Dad snapped. "Our family, and all the other families out there that have been victimized by evil. How many people have we saved, Dean? How many monsters have we taken off the chessboard? Are you saying it's not worth it? Any of it?"

Dean didn't back off. "You lost a son over this. Hell, you told him not to come back! You lost his mother . . . and now you've lost him."

He saw the faintest of twitches in his father's face, the glint of grief in the eyes again, just as he'd witnessed a mere two hours before as Sam made his personal declaration of independence.

"You want to take a shot at me, go ahead," Dad said. "You've got it coming. Free pass."

"Dad—"

"I know what Sammy means to you. I know it'll drive you batshit crazy to not have him close so you can look after him the way you always have. I know it hurts, son. And I'm sorry. So take your shot."

Dean felt a wholly unfamiliar helplessness. It wasn't the shock of realizing he was in a bad spot with a monster, that he could get hurt. It was the slow-rising, churning, painful emotion of the moment, to know that Sam was gone. That he didn't know what to do with himself. That his father thought throwing a punch would make all of it better when nothing, nothing at all, nothing ever, could make it better.

Four years of college. And then grad school, Sam had said. After that . . . some kind of career.

"We'll never get him back," Dean said, and it hurt his throat.

It hurt his heart.

"I'm sorry," Dad said. "I am."

Dean thought he might actually mean it. "Me, too."

"This job," Dad said. "It actually pays. Not in money, exactly, but in something else." He dug into his pocket, pulled something out but kept it hidden in his hand. "The guy's a used car dealer."

Dean stared at him blankly.

"He's got a truck waiting for me."

Dean shrugged. "So, what, you'll sell it for the cash?"

His father shook his head. "I thought I'd keep it."

Dean frowned. "Why?"

"Solo hunts," Dad answered. "Now and then. We can cover more ground. Or when we have to split up to dig out some intel." He looked at what was in his hand, then tossed it to Dean. "She's all yours."

Dean caught by reflex. He gazed at the keys, then stared at his father. "You're giving me the Impala?"

"You've earned her."

Dean rolled the keys in his hand, heard the chime, the click. He could find no words. There was no joy in it. No excitement. It felt nothing like he ever imagined it would, in his dreams.

Blankly, he said, "This is what fathers give to sons when they go away to college." Thinking, _Like Sammy_. "Not to guys who never finished high school."

Dad shook his head. A hint of a smile touched his mouth. "You're my eldest, Dean. She was always meant for you. I knew it the day you were born. And you love that car. You deserve her."

"I can't be happy," Dean said. "Not tonight. Not after Sammy . . . "

Dad nodded. "I know. But you will be. One day."

One day, maybe, if he were behind the wheel—and Sammy was riding shotgun.

"We leaving in the morning?" he asked. Because, as always, it was about the job. And it needed to be, now, so he could find his balance. His focus. If he didn't he could be injured, even killed.

He was a curse box, Sam had said, and he locked the bad things away.

"First thing," Dad said.

"Okay." Dean tucked the keys into his pocket.

His keys. His car.

He went into the kitchen. Opened the cabinet. Took down the unopened bottle of Jack. Didn't ask if Dad wanted any. He just poured himself a drink, raised the glass.

"To Sammy."

He knocked it back. Felt the burn all the way.

Sam had asked, the night he graduated, "Why do you even drink this?"

Dean had answered, "For the burn."

And to forget.

Sometimes it even worked.

Mostly it didn't.


	16. Chapter 16

He didn't call Dad at all. But he called Dean.

Sam reached his brother's voicemail frequently, knew Dean was working jobs, so he left messages. Touched on schoolwork a little (not too much, because Dean wouldn't care about the intricacies of writing briefs or the core requirements for someone studying contract or corporate law; or any law, for that matter, other than dodging it) and told him about the part-time job he'd scored at the main library (mostly shelving books; but hey, it was a solid work-study program) and discussed dorm life (not as far removed from motel living as he'd expected) and also said he loved having a permanent residence. That it was really nice to have predictable seasons, predictable friends, a predictable job, and a predictable, boring, routine sense of safety that bore no relation whatsoever to the utterly unpredictable and dangerous life of hunting.

Sure, he said in one message, he could get hit by a car crossing the street, but it wouldn't be a demonically possessed car, and that was a win in his book.

Dean, when he called back (and he had a tendency to do so when Sam was in class and had his phone turned off; or was at work; or was studying; or was even out with friends) usually just left a message saying he and Dad had ganked X, Y, or Z monster and he was stoked about it. Or he'd met some hot chick in Toledo or Tehachapi or Tempe or Tucson—some "T" place.

Or an "L" place, or . . . the entire alphabet. Did it matter, Sam wondered? And it was a good thing none of his friends ever caught his calls when he was out of the room, or listened to his voicemail.

'Hey, dude . . . this guy says he shot someone's pet dog full of iron and silver. What's that about?'

Sometimes when Dean called, Sam was pretty sure he was drunk. He heard the typical sounds of a bar in the background, occasionally the suggestive tones of a woman; and a couple of times, with no bar sounds, the crack of Dad's voice, as if his father had walked in on a conversation he didn't want Dean to be having. Always, then, Dean cut short the call and disconnected.

Good little soldier.

But when Dean did catch him at a good time, or Sam caught him at a good time, they were able to re-establish the warmth in their relationship. It was all too brief, but it was something.

Then Dean would start talking about the latest job, or the upcoming hunt, and Sam cut him off as soon as he could, because he really didn't want to hear about that. Too many memories. Too many negative emotions. Too much Dad.

Or else Sam would start talking about something one of his profs had said, something esoteric and academic and slightly elitist, intended for the students who were sharp enough to catch the very subtle subtext (which made Sam a little proud, because he was sharp enough) and Dean didn't give a damn about any of that.

They couldn't talk cars, because Sam didn't care. They couldn't talk law, because Dean didn't care. They were diverging, Sam realized with a punch of shock one day. It was Dean-the-hunter, and Sam-the-college-student.

Oh God. He didn't want this, not like this. But it was a runaway train gathering speed.

Dean killed monsters.

Sam went to class.

Dean slept with dozens of nameless women and liked to talk about it.

Sam waited for 'the one' and he never discussed it.

Dean liked hard rock and screaming vocals.

Sam preferred melody to sheer metallic noise.

Dean liked to talk cars.

Sam didn't have one.

Dean called when drunk.

Sam only ever got a little buzzed, and he never called his brother when he was.

Dean killed even more monsters, and drank more than ever.

Sam did neither.

Dad didn't call at all. Sam didn't call him. Dad was part of his former life. The life he no longer led.

There were no monsters in the closet.

But maybe one in Dean's closet.

Once, Sam said, "Dean, you need to dial it back. The drinking. I'm worried. You're going to get yourself killed."

"I don't drink on the job."

"You don't need to drink on the job to feel the aftereffects."

"I'm fine."

Finally, when it got really bad, Sam said it outright. "Stop calling me when you're drunk."

The crack of a freshly broken rack of balls carried easily across the open line. "Why?" Dean asked.

"I just—" Sam let the phone slide up to his forehead a moment, then returned it to his ear. "I just don't like it."

Dean sounded offended. "You didn't care when we were on the road."

It was desperation, not anger, but he didn't know if Dean could tell the difference. "Because you weren't calling me, then! You didn't have to call me at all, because we were in the motel, or the house, together."

"And that was better?"

"Yeah. Because I could see you, then. Hell, I could smell you. I knew if you were still standing up, or flat on your back while some girl's boyfriend was waling on you. And you got buzzed, yeah—but it wasn't like this. I'm worried, Dean."

"You gotta girlfriend yet, Sammy?"

"We're not talking about that."

"You got any sex life yet?"

"Dean—you're drunk."

"So? That isn't any kind of answer to whether my baby brother has a sex life."

"I don't want to talk to you when you're drunk. And you're drunk a lot these days."

In the background came the twang of country music on the jukebox, someone asking if Dean wanted a refill, and a woman referring to his brother as 'Sugar.'

"Dad's okay," Dean said.

A sudden rush of adrenaline poured through Sam's body and popped his eyes wide open. "Did something happen?"

"Nah. Not really. I mean, yeah, he got tossed around a little—both of us did—but he's okay."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I just meant . . . well, you never ask about him. I thought maybe you'd want to know that he's okay."

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose; adrenaline headache. Or something. He'd been experiencing migraines of late. "Look—I don't want him hurt. I really don't. I definitely don't want him dead. But, you know . . ."

After a long pause, Dean asked, "What? You don't want to know if he's hurt, you don't want to know if he's dead, but you don't want to know how he's doing, either?"

"I'd want to know if he's dead," Sam blurted honestly, stripping everything else out; and if that wasn't an indictment of the relationship, he didn't know what was. "Shit."

After a moment, Dean said, "Yeah," in that eloquently uncommunicative but dismissive way he'd perfected years before.

"I have to go," Sam said. "I'm sorry. It's late, and I have a test tomorrow."

"Right," Dean said. "Yeah, Dad and I have a poltergeist to chase down tomorrow. I don't know what's up with them lately . . . we've had 'em popping up all over the place since you left. Maybe it's 'cuz you're such a bitch; they like pubescent girls, you know. Oh, did I tell you Dad has a truck? It's not new, but it's a pretty cool ride."

"Dean—"

"So I've got the Impala now."

"I know." Sam didn't want to take this farther because Dean had told him this at least four times that he remembered. They were running short on conversational high points. Especially when Dean was usually buzzed or drunk when he called. "I have to go."

"Sammy—you doin' good?"

"I'm fine. I'm good."

"Any potential chicks on the horizon?"

"Not as you would know them, no."

Dean's tone sharpened. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Sam looked at the tall, leggy, long-haired blonde with the impossibly blue eyes who stood by the door tapping her watch face even as she shrugged and winced as if to apologize, but they really needed to leave or they'd be late.

"Dean—I have to go."

"Oh. Yeah. Test tomorrow. Study hard, dude."

Sam smiled at the young woman. "Yeah. I will."

He had class, and he had work, and he had friends, and he had Jess, whom he thought might be 'the one,' and not just because she was his first. They fit in all the right ways; in ways, Sam had come to realize, his brother couldn't even dream of. Dean would just have to realize that what Sam didn't have was lots of time to talk about hunting, or ganking, or Dad, or cars, or skanky one-night stands.

Maybe if Dean would actually talk, it would be different. But Dean didn't do emo.

"Listen," Sam said, "it's going to be tougher to get a hold of me as we move into finals. How about I call you, okay?"

After a moment, Dean said, "Sure, Sammy. I gotcha."

Eighteen months since Sam had left for school. He didn't know any more if Dean actually got him, or just said he did.

When he disconnected, when he rose and walked to Jess waiting at the door and tucked his phone into a pocket, he thought distractedly, _Dean's just the same. It's me. I'm the one who's changed._

"What's wrong?" Jess asked. "Your brother okay?"

She didn't know Dean. She didn't know Dad. But she knew him. She knew when he was upset.

_I'm the one who's changed._

But wasn't that what he'd wanted?

"Yeah," he answered. "Yeah, he's fine." He bent a little, kissed her. "Let's go before we're late."

###

"Dean! Dean, dammit—you okay?"

He floundered his way up from the verge of unconsciousness. Okay, he'd gotten his bell rung; in fact, he thought he could still hear it tolling inside his head, clanging at all four cardinal points of his skull.

"Dean!"

Hands were on him. Dad?

Dad's voice.

Dad's—fear?

He tried to scrape himself off the earth. "Sure . . . yeah . . . I'm good . . . I'm fine . . . I'm . . ."

Well, what was he? He'd run out of words.

"Dean. Can you understand me?"

Mostly.

What floated to the forefront of his abused head was a line from an old movie: 'What we've got here is failure to communicate.'

Hell, yeah. Cool Hand Luke. Paul Newman.

"Dean!"

Strother Martin. Yeah. That was the actor who'd spoken the line first.

"Dean, are you with me?"

Well, where the hell else would he be? He wasn't in Palo Alto going to college, was he? Nope, not him. He was in . . .

. . . Failure To Communicate. That's where he was. A town built for fathers who couldn't talk to sons, sons who couldn't talk to fathers, and brothers who once could talk to each other but couldn't anymore.

_'It's going to be tougher to get a hold of me as we move into finals. How about I call you, okay?'_

Graveyard. Graveyard, somewhere.

"Dean—come on." Hands were on his jaw, holding his wobbly head very still. "You with me? You okay?"

Yes, and no. Or no, and yes. Depending.

_'Sure, Sammy. I gotcha.'_

"Hey," he mumbled. "Sammy? You there?"

Hands tilted his head forward, gently walked their way along the back of his skull. "Okay, kiddo. You've got a pretty big lump back here, and I think I feel blood. I'm not going to flash a light in your eyes in the middle of a dark cemetery to be certain, but I'm pretty sure you're concussed. We'll get you back to the motel, see if you need stitches, check you out top to bottom, the whole nine yards. I'm going to try and pull you up now—tell me if you think you're going to hurl."

"—d'ja get it?"

"I got it. You weren't exactly the distraction we planned on, but we got the job done."

"Distraction?"

"You were supposed to be on guard duty, son. We didn't set this up so you'd be bait."

"We fishin'? Got bait?"

Dad's big hand closed on his shoulder. "Let's get you back to the motel. You can sleep this off in a couple of days."

"Sammy."

"No, Dean. It's Dad."

"—Sammy comin'?"

"No, son. He can't."

"Where . . . ?"

"Okay, I'm going to pull you up. Careful, kiddo. Don't puke all over my boots."

"—nugh—"

Dad levered him up, steadied him. Held him in one spot. "You good?"

In a moment of perfect clarity, Dean declared, "Sam should be here."

Dad said, "Yes."

"—wanna see him. You can't stop me."

His father briefly cupped the side of his neck. "I was going to tell you later . . . Jim Murphy says there's a hunt up near Palo Alto. One-man job. You good for it?"

Dean straightened. "Hell, yeah."

Dad smiled. "Well, you've got your own wheels. What's keepin' you?"

Dean nodded at him sagely. "But I gotta hurl first."

John Winchester laughed. "Okay, son. You do that. But can you manage on your own? Because it's not exactly a spectator sport."

Dean's belly rolled. He bent, gripped the headstone with one hand, his father's arm with the other, donated everything he'd had for both breakfast and lunch. And God, but his head hurt. Probably it was best if it just fell right off his shoulders and bounced away to a world where disgruntled ghosts did not fling perfectly respectable hunters into gravestones.

But maybe it was worth all of it if he got to see Sammy.

Even in the depths of pronounced physical misery, he managed to find a smile. No maybe about it.

He scrubbed his mouth with a dirt-soiled sleeve, peered up at his father muzzily. "You comin' to Stanford?"

"I've got something in Nevada. We'll meet up later. I'll send coordinates."

"You could come. See Sam."

Dad's tone was odd. "I wouldn't want to spoil the reunion. But do the job first."

"'kay," Dean mumbled.

###

Sam caught the call between classes. He looked at the display, thought about hitting IGNORE, but he was between classes and his brother wouldn't be drunk at 1 p.m.

"Hey," he said.

Nothing.

"Dean?"

"Yeah . . . um . . ."

"Dean, what? You called me."

"—Sammy?"

"You called me. Unless you meant to call someone else."

"Who'd I call?"

"Ghostbusters?" Sam ventured, even though he knew the quote wasn't quite right. God, but Dean had made him watch that damn movie eighty times, at least, just to point out inaccuracies, and that the whole thing about crossing the streams didn't matter a damn.

Well, unless you were standing at a urinal next to another guy.

Which still grossed Sam out.

"Sammy."

Sam stopped walking. He glanced around; students were thronging everywhere on their way to class, to dorms, to wherever the hell they all went when they didn't have to talk to intoxicated brothers.

"Dean. Are you drunk?"

"—comin' up there, Sammy."

"You're coming here?"

"—um. Gotta job."

Sam felt more than a little schizophrenic. 'Yes! Great news!' And 'I get to see my brother!' And 'My brother kills monsters!' And 'My brother's a drunk!'

Oh shit. That last one.

Well, maybe the last two.

And then something else occurred. "Dad too?"

"Nuh. Jus' me."

Well, that was a relief. "When?"

"We're in . . . where the hell are we?—shit, I can't read the card. Um, maybe 2-3 days out. Or 3-4. Somethin'. What's today?"

"The weekend," Sam blurted. "Just—come for the weekend." Okay, he could somehow tell Jess she couldn't come over, and that he couldn't go to her place. He'd be sick. Really sick. Or something. "I'm only available on the weekend, Dean. I have class, a job—you come on the weekend, that's it. Okay?"

The concept of Dean Winchester on campus, in a dorm . . . he didn't even want to envision it. Because either Dean would mow his way through half of the entire female population on campus (plus maybe the faculty), or he'd find the nearest hangout, challenge all and sundry to pool, beat their asses, and laugh like hell even if the suckers he defeated were students Sam had to sit next to in class for the rest of the semester.

_My brother does not play well with others._

"Weekend?" Dean said.

"You got four days until the weekend," Sam said. "Dean—you have to understand . . . I've got class, a job (and a girlfriend), obligations (friends), and I don't mean it to sound bad, but . . . I'm really busy. Weekend's fine, but, that's all I can afford."

Yeah, he'd be really sick. No Jess. No friends. No potentially awkward situations.

And he froze, forgot to breathe.

_When did I stop thinking of my big brother as a hero? When did he become something I'd rather hide from my friends?_

When had he ever had friends, before Stanford?

"—took out a ghost t'night," Dean slurred. "—'n ganked a chupa . . . chup'cabra las' week."

Sam blinked hard. This was why he had to hide his brother. If he got drunk like this and started blabbing . . . "Yeah. Okay. I'll see you this weekend. Um, I'm in Stanley Hall." Though maybe not next year. Jess's folks had a two-storey townhouse where she lived, and she'd invited him to move in. "Room 214."

"—know that," Dean mumbled.

"You know where I am?"

"Keepin' tabs on you, Sammy."

It raised a wave of hostility. "Does Dad know where I am?"

Nothing.

"Dean?"

"—dunno. Never asked."

Well. He could live with Dean knowing where he was. But Dad keeping tabs? No. "Dean, just the weekend."

"Sure, Sammy. I gotcha."

Sam opened his mouth to say something more, but his brother was gone.

Eighteen months. Eighteen months since they'd been together.

Dean, to save the world, hunted monsters.

Sam, to get the grades, hunted proper pronouns and dangling participles.

He sighed as he returned his phone to his pocket. In some cases, he felt strongly, grammar was worth killing over.

Well. Okay. Not killing over.

Maiming, maybe.

Then again, who was he to judge? He was going to lie to his girlfriend.

_Don't come over because I'm so contagious one germ will infect the entire state of California._

Well. That might be overkill.

###

Dean was vaguely aware he'd dropped the connection to his brother. Probably when he dropped the actual phone. By the time he wrestled it to his ear again, Sam was gone.

He lay in bed and felt like thirty miles of badly laid asphalt full of burgeoning potholes. He could feel them bubbling nefarious threats just beneath the coy, quiet surface that suggested stability, but lied. He'd lost breakfast and lunch in the cemetery and refused to risk dinner to the same. So Dad had gone out on his own.

Fine by Dean. It had provided a chance to call Sam.

Weekend. Something about the weekend.

Was he supposed to go for the weekend? Or avoid the weekend?

Did any of it matter? They hadn't seen each other for eighteen freakin' months. Sam could afford to skip a class. Hell, he could afford to skip a whole day of classes. The presence of a long-lost brother trumped boring schoolwork.

He lay flat on his back with his incredibly fragile head propped on pillows, ignoring his equally fragile belly, and wished he could fast-forward beyond the weekend so his mind was clear and he could conduct a conversation with his brother when he didn't sound drunk. Because he was pretty sure Sam thought he was drunk.

Damn concussions.

Okay, sometimes he _was_ drunk when he called Sam.

Because it was hard not having his baby brother behind or beside him in the midst of a hunt, or looking up lore, or being a reluctant wingman, or riding in the backseat of the car that was now his . . .

That was the worst. The Impala was his now, and he'd taken up permanent, unshared Dean Winchester residence behind the wheel, but the shotgun position was absent his brother.

The doorlock rattled. Dean lurched up even as he grabbed for the big Bowie beneath his pillow. By the time he untangled it, Dad was in the room.

"Slow," Dad remarked, carrying in a white bag and two big plastic-capped cups as he kicked the door closed.

"Concussed," Dean retorted, squinting against the pain. "My best weapon is projectile vomiting. Wanna see it?"

"I brought dessert. Cherry pie."

Dean's belly rolled. "I'd love me some pie," he muttered, lying back down with extreme, exquisite care, "but maybe a week from now. Two. Especially if it's red and lumpy."

"That's appetizing." Dad set things down on the table. "Did you call your brother?"

Dean thought about that for awhile. Part of it was the concussion. Part of it was that Dad even asked. Finally he settled on, "He has a thing."

"A thing?"

A wave of pain ran through his head. He shouldn't have gone for the Bowie. But how could he not? The world was full of monsters. "'Till the weekend. Busy till then."

"Too busy for his brother?"

Dean closed his eyes. _I'm not here, I'm not here; nobody asked me that question._

"Dean?"

_Don't ask me that question, because I think I know the answer._

God, but his head was killing him. "Weeken'," he slurred. "Then jus' him and me."

"That's good," Dad said.

Dean frowned over that. But he slid toward sleep before he could ask if Dad had meant it. If Dad had even said it.

Concussed. Not drunk.

But he wasn't sure, these days, that Sam remembered the difference.

Dean stirred a little, tried to get comfortable. How many days to the weekend? How many days to his brother?

His father's voice rumbled. "Go to sleep, kiddo. I got your back."

Dean frowned as he fell off the edge into sleep.

_Who's got Sammy's back?_

Wasn't him. Wasn't anybody.


	17. Chapter 17

On Friday, he told Jess via phone: "No, I'm good. Well, I mean, I'll survive. Yeah—yeah, it's a migraine . . . I just want to stay in, stay quiet. I'm sorry. I know we had plans, but . . . are you okay with it? I think I'll just stay quiet all weekend. You know what it's like . . . I'll call you if I feel better. But for now . . . well, you know how I am. No lights, no TV or music, no talking—yeah, boring stuff. You okay with that?"

It wasn't the same as being actually contagious, but she knew what his migraines were like. Dad had always said if you were going to lie, stick close to the truth whenever possible. He hated invoking anything learned of John Winchester, but this was indeed close to the truth: he did suffer migraines, and they did screw with pretty much everything, and his friends and Jessica knew he preferred to hole up and ride it out when the headaches occurred. He'd struggled his way to class on the days when things got bad, had tried the usual meds prescribed by campus docs, but when the migraines settled in it seemed like nothing mitigated them. It had become his curse. Maybe some kind of long-distance payback from Dad.

It meant that he had to carry out the charade for half of Friday and Sat/Sun, but it was best.

Of course Friday was also the day any number of friends called to set up a weekend activity he now couldn't attend, since he'd established the migraine; and the day a few dorm-mates banged on his door to see if he wanted to do X, Y, or Z, which meant he had to put on his hang-dog, squinty-eyed _I'm dying_ expression and answer the door looking like death warmed over even when he felt perfectly fine. It was all about living (or acting) the moment—even if his moment wasn't exactly built on a foundation of truth.

It occurred to him that he needn't do any of it. That he could simply let Dean arrive with the chips falling in whatever pattern they chose to fall, and dealing with stuff as it came up—but, well, this was Dean. Dean was not a toy one unwrapped without first reading the warnings.

_WARNING. This toy is dangerous. If you choose to play with this toy, do not expect anyone to rescue you from it when bad things happen._

Except, of course, that the Dean Winchester toy would rescue you from himself. Because rescuing people was what he did.

_WARNING. This toy may attract danger. If so, be certain that this toy will risk its life to save you from this danger._

Yeah. That was Dean.

But it was better for Jess, and better for friends, and for dorm residents, that they not know such a toy existed, so that rescue was not on anyone's radar. Including Dean's.

Jess knew about Dean. A little. She just didn't know Dean. And that was safest. Because these days boring old Sam Winchester was not the kind of guy to bring danger into anyone's life.

Dean, however . . .

Yeah. Best no one knew Dean was visiting.

So he had Friday afternoon to himself, to prepare for a Saturday and Sunday featuring his big brother.

Sam smiled. Too long since they'd been together.

 _My God_ , he thought. _Dean._

Who cared about the drinking? Who cared about battered flesh, blood-stained clothes? Who cared about anything other than just Dean being Dean?

And then his smile died.

He did care. He cared about it all. Now more than ever.

Dean's life was not his own.

He sat down on the end of his bed and looked at his cell phone. Jess. Job. Friends. He'd worked hard to gain all of them, to keep all of them.

Dean bulled through life without any of those things.

_It's not wrong. It's not wrong to be different—to want to be different—from my big brother._

No. Nor had it ever been wrong.

So why did he feel it was? That _he_ was?

###

Dean killed the monster Thursday afternoon. Thursday night he thought he might die. Friday morning he knew he wouldn't. Friday afternoon, as he hauled himself up the stairs to the second floor of Stanley Hall, he wished he would. The residual effects of the concussion coupled with the wound were pretty uncomfortable.

Nah. Sammy was in Room 214. He could make it that far. Then Sam would do what Sam always did when Dad wasn't around: Patch him up.

Well. When he couldn't do it himself.

Except it probably wasn't a good idea to even let Sam know he needed patching up. Because Sam would bitch and moan that hunting was a bad choice of lifestyle, that any sane person would go off to college and learn shit, and go for a career, and get married and buy a house and have 2.5 kids and a dog. Maybe a cat. Chicks dug cats, for some unknown reason.

No, scratch the cat. No pun intended. He was pretty sure he was allergic.

So no. He wouldn't tell Sam anything about the hunt, because Sam didn't care about hunts anymore. And the last thing Sam would want to know was that his big brother had damn near been killed the day before. On a hunt.

He found the door, leaned a shoulder briefly against the wall beside it because his back hurt like hell, and his head was throbbing, and he needed to catch his breath, and then some guy came out of the room across the hall and said Sam was in quarantine.

Dean gazed at him blankly. "He's what?"

The guy shrugged. Blond, blue-eyed good-looking kid, wearing some improbable mix of checked sweater vest—sweater freakin' vest!—and khaki slacks and a pink shirt. A freakin' pink shirt.

"Well, not really quarantine. Migraine," the guy said. "He gets them sometimes."

"Since when?" Because he had no memory whatsoever of Sam ever having much more than a minor headache now and then, except when he'd been dinged by a ghost or something, and he didn't see that happening at Stan-freakin'-ford.

The guy looked at him oddly. "'Since when?' Since, like, as long as I've known him."

"How long is that?" Dean demanded, knowing he sounded more than a little aggressive. And he didn't give a shit. He was tired, and he hurt.

The guy glared. "Since we moved in on the same day almost two years ago." He looked Dean up and down, and then his expression changed. He seemed—amused. "You delivering pizza or something? Or did you get lost? Because you don't look like you belong here."

Dean said, "'scuze me. I've got an itch." And then he proceeded to scratch his chin with an upraised middle finger.

The guy was unimpressed. He merely smiled, took his phone out of his pocket, tapped a number, and when whoever it was answered he said, "Sam. Really sorry to bother you, but some asshole is outside your door. You want me to call Security, or do you want to handle it?"

Within seconds Sam opened the door, took one look at the situation, and his eyes went wide. "Um, oh . . . uh, yeah. I'll handle it. Thanks, Brady." His smile was strained. "Dean . . . I thought you were coming tomorrow."

Dean fixed the guy—Brady—with a level stare and said, "Your mother pack for you? Pink shirt, sweater vest—seriously?"

Which is when Sam grabbed his arm and dragged him into the room.

Dean winced and gritted his teeth against a yelp of pain as he half-stumbled into the dorm room, but caught himself as Sam closed the door. His brother was clearly pissed. He was wearing his patented bitchface.

"Dean, for God's sake—knock it off. Brady's a friend!"

"Brady's an asshole."

"No, he's not an asshole. But you are sometimes—what's with the attitude?"

"Attitude? Me?" Dean glanced around, took in the surroundings. "Nice digs, Sammy."

"Nice room, nice dorm, nice campus, nice school," Sam said, and he did not sound happy.

So. It was like that.

Dean suddenly felt overwhelmed with the need to be elsewhere, with the certainty that he didn't fit here. This was not his life, it was Sam's. It hadn't been Sam's, once, but clearly was now. His brother was friends with guys named Brady who wore sweater vests and pink shirts.

All the things he never meant to say were suddenly in his mouth. "This was a mistake," Dean said. "Hey, look . . . I get it. Yeah, you're right—I can be an asshole. And a hard-ass. And I piss people off, and I don't fit in here. I wear torn jeans, shirts that have been bleached God knows how many times to get the blood out, and my father's coat that's almost older than I am, and I don't even have a freakin' high school diploma. And I don't know shit from Shinola except how to kill monsters, and I sure as hell don't own a sweater vest and a pink shirt. Okay?"

Sam's expression was odd. "Why do you even care about a sweater vest and a pink shirt?"

"Because once upon a time we'd have pointed at a guy who wore them and laughed at him, Sam! Together!"

"Like people laughed at us?"

Dean stared at him. "What?"

"High school," Sam said. "Don't you remember?"

"Which one?"

"All of them."

"They laughed at us?"

"Yes. You didn't know?—oh wait. You might not have noticed when you were in the janitor's closet making out with some girl from English class, or under the bleachers with a cheerleader. And then the guys stopped laughing at you and just wanted to beat you up. But me they laughed at. Geek Boy. Nerd. Loser. Among other things. I think the only reason we both survived high school is because we kept moving to new ones."

Dean sighed, rubbed a hand across his forehead. "I don't remember any of that." He rolled his shoulders a little, wished he hadn't. "So, what's this about a migraine?"

Sam shrugged. "I get them sometimes."

Dean looked at him closely. "But you don't have one now."

Sam frowned. "No."

"Why did Brady say you did?"

Sam had never been able to hide embarrassment, and he couldn't now. Red crept into his face. "I had one earlier today."

"How long do they usually last?"

"Um, a day or two."

"But you're over it now."

"Yes."

Dean nodded slowly as the penny dropped. Yeah, he got it all right. And it was like a kick in the 'nads. "So, any plans to show me around? Introduce me to your friends? Maybe Brady and I can hug it out, have a chick-flick moment and bond, or something."

Sam reddened again. "No, no plans. I thought you and I could just hang out here."

"In your dorm room."

"Yeah."

"But no tour of your favorite hang outs? No introductions? No 'Hey, this is my brother who dropped out high school and kills monsters for a living?' Except, oh, yeah, it's not for a living because we don't get paid. I guess it's just a hobby."

"Dean, stop it."

"The way you stopped it? The whole thing? Just walked away?"

Sam was angry now. "Are you drunk?"

He was not. He'd hit the flask right after he arrived, yes, because he freakin' hurt. But he was not drunk. He glared at his brother and refused to answer.

"Is this what you came here for?" Sam asked. "To guilt-trip me because you think I ran away?"

Eighteen months apart. Who'd have thought they'd come to this after eighteen months, when they'd been together for more than eighteen years?

"Sammy—" And then he released the breath he didn't know he was holding. "This was a mistake."

"Maybe so," Sam agreed grimly.

Dean felt hollow inside, and on the verge of—something. "Yeah. Okay." He reached for the doorknob, and then Sam grabbed his coat sleeve and yanked him back. Which was when his plan for saying nothing at all about being injured went right to hell, because he couldn't stop the blurted, startled outcry of sheer pain.

"You're hurt," Sam said, and he was neither embarrassed nor angry anymore. He was just Sam worried about his big brother. "Let me see."

Dean planted his feet. "I'm fine."

"Bullshit." Sam knew him too well. He grabbed the coat again and threatened to drag him to the second bed, and he was big enough now to do it—hell, Dean thought the kid had grown another freakin' inch—so he gave up and went over there.

"Okay, I got a little banged up. You, um—you got a first aid kit?"

"I have a few Band-Aids. We have a health center on campus, so if I need anything bigger than that, I go there."

He gingerly reached into a pocket, withdrew the keys. "Guess you better get the one that's in the car, then."

Sam stared at the keys, then at him. "How bad is it?"

"I dunno. It's my back. Hard to see it."

Sam took the keys. "Sit down before you fall down. I'll be right back. Where are you parked?"

Dean waved in a vague direction. "Out front. One of those 15 minute spaces. I'll probably get ticketed. Ask me if I care." He paused. "I guess that makes me an asshole. You want me to apologize to Brady for being myself?"

"Sit down," Sam said between gritted teeth. "I'll be back in a minute."

His back was really hurting. Dean sat down carefully as Sam shut the door behind him.

The thought crossed his mind that this was the perfect opportunity to duck out on his brother and leave him to his new life—except that he'd stupidly given Sam the car keys.

To the room at large, he muttered, "This is what blood loss does. It makes you stupid."

Of course Sam would tell him he was stupid for losing the blood in the first place.

Maybe he should go apologize to Brady, if he was Sam's friend. He had been kind of an asshole to the guy.

Nah.

He pulled out his flask and gulped down a fair amount of whiskey. Because he knew what Sam was going to say when he saw his back.

###

"Jesus Christ, Dean! What did you tangle with?"

"Thought you didn't want to hear about hunts anymore."

Dean was seated on one side of the narrow bed while Sam stood on the other. His tee and flannel shirt, now piled on top of the leather jacket, were bloody across the back. From the waist up all he wore was the amulet Sam had given him so many years before.

"I care about you, you moron." Sam emitted a wince of sympathy; the wound curved from Dean's left side to his spine. "That needs to be stitched."

Dean began to sigh, but his breath caught on a hitch. "I was hoping a row of butterflies might do it. No, huh?"

"Definitively no. When did this happen?"

"Yesterday."

"Did you treat it at all?"

"As best I could." Dean shrugged; caught his breath again. "Hard to reach."

"Down on your belly," Sam told him, and unzipped the duffel.

Dean grimaced and slowly acquiesced. "Two beds . . . you got a roommate? He gonna walk in here in the midst of this and learn your deep, dark secret?"

"Had a roommate. He withdrew after three weeks, went home to Indiana. Couldn't take the pressure. And no, no one's going to learn anything about hunting." Sam pulled out antiseptic wipes, suture kit with its thread and curved needle, topical anesthetic.

"But Sammy's up to the pressure, huh?"

"Going to school is easy after killing monsters. Okay, I'm going to sit next to you. You know the drill." He swabbed the slice, swatted his brother's jean-clad butt as Dean twitched against the assault. "Stop being a wuss—and don't do that when I'm stitching."

"It was cold! That's why I jumped. You know I'm a rock when it comes to stitches."

"Okay, lidocaine gel for the big baby. Then I'll get started."

Dean actually was a rock when it came to stitches. Always had been. Sam had long wondered about his brother's strength of will when it came to injuries. He knew Dean felt pain, but he just seemed to decide that he wouldn't show it, and generally didn't unless the injury was serious.

"You're going to break all your teeth one of these days."

Dean lay with his hands shoved beneath his head. Sam could see his face in profile. "What about my teeth?"

"From gritting them against the pain."

Dean grunted dismissal.

"This is going to scar. The edges of the skin dried out because you waited too long. You should have gone to a clinic—and yes, I know what you're going to say. But sometimes professional medical care is necessary, Dean."

"Chicks dig scars."

"You always say that."

"It's true. You should hear what they say. And a lot of them seem to think they can make it all better if they kiss every one, which can be a lot of fun when they go low and get close to—"

"TMI, Dean," Sam said sternly, and heard the muted chuckle.

"Poor Sammy. Maybe one of these days he'll find himself a girlfriend. It may take until he's forty, but—"

"I have a girlfriend."

Dean twisted his head to gaze over his left shoulder. "Seriously?"

He hadn't meant to say anything, but Dean's teasing had stung. Now he tried to change the subject. "You know—this is something I sure don't miss. Stitching you, or getting stitched."

"She like the real thing, or just casual for the sex?"

"I'm stitching, Dean. Be quiet."

"Well, since I'm here, maybe the three of us could go out somewhere, get to know—"

"She's out of town." Well. That came out more sharply than he intended. "She visits her folks sometimes."

"Blonde, brunette, or redhead?"

"Blonde."

"Eye color."

"Stop with the interrogation. Let me concentrate on trying to keep you from looking like Frankenstein's monster."

"Fugly dude."

"And if this scar is fugly, maybe no chick will want to kiss it." Sam worked the curved needle through both sides of the torn flesh, tugged it closed. Maybe he should tell Dean something about Jess, if only to distract him from Sam's ministrations. But—Jess was private. Jess was special. Dean wouldn't understand. He'd never had a serious girlfriend in his life. "Almost done. Maybe five more."

"Eighteen months ago, you'd have been faster. You're out of practice."

Sam scowled at broken skin. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Well, at this particular moment it is!" Dean blew out an audible breath. "You got a picture?"

"Of what?"

"Well, not of the butchery you're perpetrating on my flesh. The girlfriend, dumb-ass."

Sam was silent.

"Oh, come on. If she's out of town, let me at least see her picture."

"Shut up while I finish this."

"Sammy—"

"I just don't want to hear any of the rude comments you'll make. "

"I don't make rude comments about your girlfriends!"

"Dean, when I was in high school and actually had a girlfriend a couple of times, you always made rude comments. Either they were fugly, or you tried to get in their pants."

"You think I'd want to get into this chick's pants?" Dean chuckled again. "Well, if she's hot—"

"You keep this up, I'm going to stitch your mouth closed."

"Is she hot?"

"Scale of 1 to 10? She's a 15."

Dean crowed delight. "Ah, there's my little brother! Goes to college, gets himself a hot girlfriend. Guess you learned something from big brother after all."

Sam smiled. This felt good. This felt right. This felt like old times, ragging on one another. "Couple more, then we're done."

"Wait'll I tell Dad. Little Sammy's all grown up."

His smile vanished. "Not a word, Dean. Not a word to Dad."

"Why? "

"Because I don't want him in my business. Not in any part of it. I mean it, Dean." He finished the last stitch, knotted it, snipped, applied several large gauze squares and taped them down. "We've got some Vicodin in here."

"Nah, I'm good."

"This is a bad slice, it's a day old, you've got almost thirty stitches in you, and I know it hurts like hell."

"I'll be fine. You need to move, though. I gotta hit the head."

Sam rose, began packing up the kit. He kept an eye on his brother as Dean very slowly, and very gingerly, began to lever himself off the bed. The shift from lying flat to being upright clearly cost him. Sam heard the hitched breath, saw the clench of his jaw, the tautness of his face. But Dean said nothing, just walked carefully around the corner to the tiny bathroom.

When he came back out, Sam offered him two pills. "Tylenol," he said. "That's not against the Dean Winchester code, last I heard. And a bottle of Gatorade for the electrolytes."

Dean shrugged, accepted the pills, washed them down with several gulps of Gatorade. "What are we doing for dinner?"

"Thought we could have pizza delivered."

Dean nodded. "That works."

But Sam wasn't sure Dean would be awake for pizza. Sure, one of the pills had been Tylenol. The other a Vicodin.

One way or another, Dean was going to be pain-free. At least for a little while.


	18. Chapter 18

Like clips from a movie or TV show the fragments came tumbling in, but with extreme clarity, and in chronological order.

Dad laughed, held him up so he could peer down into the crib. 'Meet your baby brother, Dean. This is Sammy, named after your grandfather the way you're named after your grandmother. And you have a new job, now, a very, very important job. You're a big brother. And that means you look after him no matter what. Understand, kiddo?'

And:

'You think Sammy's ready to toss around a football yet?' Which made Dean laugh, because Sammy was only six months old.

And:

'Take your brother outside as fast as you can and don't look back! Now, Dean, go!'

And:

'Look, Dean, life is going to be different now. It's just you, me, and Sammy. But your job is the same: look after your brother no matter what. You will always be the big brother, and he will always be the youngest. When I'm on hunting trips and I can't have you with me, you'll be in charge of Sammy, okay? You gotta make sure he's okay.'

And:

'Sammy's smaller than the other boys, Dean, so it's up to you to make sure no one takes advantage of him. He's training now, too, so someday he'll be able to fend for himself, but for now it's all on you, okay? We gotta look after him, you and me. And when I'm not here, I know I can trust you to take care of him.'

And:

'I need to keep my eye on him. Need to keep him safe. Keep all of us safe.'

And most recently:

'I know what Sammy means to you. I know it'll drive you batshit crazy to not have him close so you can look after him the way you always have. I know it hurts, son. And I'm sorry. So take your shot.'

He awoke with a jerk, then hissed as his back keened a cacophony of protests.

_What—?_

He lay belly-down, and it was dark. It did not smell of motel, the familiar odors of cleaning solution, moldy a/c unit, overbleached sheets.

_Where—?_

It was too quiet. No motel was ever this quiet.

Then he heard Dad in his head again, talking about Sammy.

He reached under the pillow for the Bowie, found nothing. No gun either.

His head throbbed. His back screamed. What the hell had he done to himself? Where was he, and why did he have no weapon tucked beneath his pillow?

He shifted, grimaced, felt the bite of something from his side to his spine. He knew that sensation.

_Stitches—?_

God, Keith Moon and John Bonham were hammering on the drums inside his skull. And throw in Ginger Baker and Charlie Watts to boot.

The bed suddenly rotated nearly out from under him. He gripped it with both hands, digging fingers into bedclothes and mattress.

_Am I going to—? Oh, no. Nonono._

Where the hell was the bathroom? Where was a trash can? Where was the floor—?

He released his death-grip on the bed and applied it instead to the sides of his head even as he swallowed hard against rising nausea.

_What the hell happened to me—?_

He couldn't wait any longer. Hurling into a mattress he was lying on, or over the side of the bed, was not an activity he wished to undertake. He pushed himself up despite the massive complaint of both back and head, tried to catch his balance, realized he had no idea where he was in relationship to anything in the room. He staggered forward, arms outstretched, found a wall. Ran hands along it as he moved, feeling sick and wobbly and blazingly befuddled.

When he got to the end of the wall he felt an opening, curled himself around it, took two steps and literally walked into a door. He rebounded even as it banged open, and a slapping hand just inside the jamb at last found a light switch. He flipped it on, then recoiled as the illumination sent a shockwave through his head.

But. A toilet. He'd worry about his head later.

On his knees, curved over the porcelain god, he felt the pull of stitches as he heaved. But it was a small burn of misery compared to the jackhammer in his skull. Involuntary tears ran from his eyes.

When the spasms at last ended he fell over onto a hip and hung on to the toilet to keep himself semi-upright. One hand he pressed against his head, which he feared might crack open if he didn't clamp it closed.

"Dean? You okay? —Jesus, Dean, you look terrible!"

He stared up at his brother in shock. "Sammy? What are you doing here?"

Sam stared back, hair mussed from sleep. His eyes were widening. "What?"

"I thought you were at Stanford."

"This _is_ Stanford—wait. You don't remember?" Sam squatted down, reached out to put a hand on his bare shoulder. "Dean, do you know where you are?"

He realized he was wearing jeans and underwear, but nothing else. Barefoot, shirtless. "I'm—somewhere." He frowned, wished he hadn't, rubbed fitfully at his brow. "What are you doing here? "

"Dean, this is Stanford. You're in Palo Alto." Sam, wearing wrinkled tee and sweat pants, pressed the back of his hand against his brother's forehead, then leaned around him to flush the toilet. "I don't think it's a fever. Don't you remember coming here?" He grabbed a washcloth, dampened it, handed it to Dean, who wiped unsteadily at his mouth. "Let's get you up. I want to take a look at your stitches."

Dean moved sluggishly, rising only by virtue of Sam's steadying hand and lift. Once on his feet, he leaned against the sink until Sam urged him out of the bathroom into the short hallway, around the corner, and toward a rumpled bed. A desk light burned over by a second bed.

Dean blinked woozily, swept the room with a glance, then frowned. "No TV in this motel?"

"It's not a motel. It's a dorm room. There's a communal TV room, though some students have their own. Dean—don't you know where you are?"

"Where's Dad—?"

"Oh, crap," Sam muttered. "Maybe we need to go to the health center. But for now, sit down and let me look at your back."

Dean allowed Sam to guide him down on the end of the bed. "What happened to me?"

"You were hunting. Thursday, you said. You got nailed."

Dean felt careful fingers touch the tender skin along the stitches. "Where's Dad?"

Sam's tone was beginning to verge on frantic. "Dean—Dad's not here. I'm at school. I left, remember? Over eighteen months ago."

_'I know what Sammy means to you. I know it'll drive you batshit crazy to not have him close so you can look after him the way you always have. I know it hurts, son. And I'm sorry. So take your shot.'_

Dean squinted, trying to fix the memory in its proper time. Rubbed at the back of his skull. "Yeah. You left." He stared hard at his brother, tried to keep his gaze from wandering away. "Sammy—from the beginnin' was my job to look after you. Dad said so. 's because he cares, Sammy. He cares about you. You never got that. You jus' both butted heads . . . I could never make either of you see clear that if you'd just lissen to one 'nother . . . " He pressed the heel of his hand against his brow as recollection clicked into place. "—maybe jus' need another drink . . . okay? Hair o' th' dog. Flask is in my coat."

"Another drink! _Another?_ " Sam dropped down to kneel in front of him. "You mean—you drank earlier today?"

"'fore you stitched me up. Medic'nal app'cation."

"Oh God." Sam closed his eyes a moment. "I gave you a Vicodin, Dean! No wonder you're so screwed up."

Dean frowned at him. "You don' do that, Sammy. Ev'yone knows you don' mix booze and opi . . . opies." With a side of week-old concussion aftereffects to boot. He elected not to tell his brother about that.

"Opioids," Sam corrected him absently. "Well, it was hours ago so it's in your system . . . nothing to do but wait it out. I could get you some coffee. There's a vending machine on every floor."

"Hair o' the dog, Sammy."

"No. No more booze. Damn it, Dean, you should have told me."

Dean scowled at him. "—told me it was Tylenol."

Sam squinched up his features into his classic guiltface. "Well, one was. But still—I wouldn't think one would make you this bad. Maybe you've got a wonky system."

"Nothin's wonky about my sys'em. All sys'ems go." Dean reached out, patted Sam on his arm. "You don' know him the way I do, Sammy."

"Who?"

"Dad."

Sam stiffened. "I don't want to talk about Dad."

"The night you left, when I took you to the station . . . when I got back, he wasn't the same. He hurt, Sammy. You just didn't see it. And all the times, all the times he told me to look out for you . . . because he cares. You have no idea."

"We're not talking about this."

Dean sighed, wished he hadn't because stitched flesh didn't like it. "Tha's the problem right there. You don't talk about it."

"Pot, kettle!" Sam snapped. "Do you know how many times I've tried to get you to open up about one thing or another? You just stuff everything away inside."

Dean nodded sagely. "Curse box. Yup. But that's me. "'m talkin' 'bout you an' Dad."

Sam was clearly frustrated. "Dean—no, never mind. Look, just lie down and go back to sleep. It's only around midnight anyway. Come on. Just turn over, lie on your stomach."

"There's nothing under my pillow," he protested.

"That's because there's nothing here to kill." Sammy was definitely exasperated. "Turn over, lie down, go to sleep."

He followed the first two orders, carefully settling the right side of his face into the pillow. "—know what's wrong with you, Sam?"

"No, Dean. What's wrong with me?"

"Your brain is too big, and you think with it."

"Uh, okaaay. But as long as we're telling truths, here . . . I've got one for you. You need to drink less. Or not at all."

Dean's eyes were closed. "Then come back, Sammy. I'll stop."

And Sam suddenly sounded like John Winchester. "You will not put this on me. This is not my responsibility. This is a hole you've dug, and you will have to climb out of it your own damn self."

Dean felt himself starting to drift. "'kay. But 's not the same."

"This is my life, Dean. I'm not coming back. I'm done with all of it."

"Done with Dad?"

"Yes. But he's the one who told me to stay gone."

"Done with me."

"Dean, that's not true!"

He made a brief, vague gesture with one limp hand, let it drop back to the bed. "Writing's on th' wall."

_'Look, Dean, life is going to be different now. It's just you, me, and Sammy.'_

Not any more.

He felt a wave of commingled pain, regret, and grief, and then it, and he, broke on the stony shore and ran back out to sea.

###

The cell going off woke Sam at some unGodly hour of the morning. He hooked himself up on one elbow and fumbled for it on his bedside table, finally activating the display and holding phone to ear. "Yeah."

"Dad? Hey, 's me . . . lissen, I've run into—"

Sam sat bolt upright. "Dean. It's me. Who were you calling?"

"—Sammy?"

"Yeah." He looked at the clock, saw it was 4 a.m. "Were you calling Dad?"

"—Sammy?"

Sam propped his pillow against the wall, slumped against it. "You drunk-dialed me, didn't you?"

"—um, was callin' for Dad. Hey, Sammy."

"Hey," Sam said tightly.

"—hit the wrong name."

"Uh-huh. Like 'Dad' and 'Sam' are so much alike."

Dean laughed. "—three letters . . . right?"

Into the darkness, Sam shook his head. In the background he heard a clatter, like something being knocked over, and Dean's blurted invective. More clatter. A woman's voice murmured something indistinct. Then the next sentence came clearly over the ether.

"Here, sugar, let me help you clean that up. I'll pour you another drink."

"Sammy, hey—"

"If you call Dad drunk . . ." Sam shook his head again. "Are you on a case?"

"—was, but—"

"You can't do this, Dean! You're going to get yourself killed!"

"Can't do what?"

"This. Look what it did to you when you were out here two months ago. You could have had a really bad interaction with the booze and the Vicodin. Hell, you could have gotten sick while you slept and choked to death on your own vomit." He paused. "Do you even care, Dean? Or is this some sick form of acting out?"

The woman again, sounding oh so—willing. "Sugar, let me do something about that for you. Trust me, I can help."

Sam wanted to hurl the phone across the room. "You were going to call Dad while you're drunk and in the middle of a patented Dean Winchester one-night stand? Are you out of your freakin' mind?" Now he wanted to pull chunks of hair out by the roots. Desperation, anger, and trepidation, a sense of precipice, warred for supremacy. "If this is some kind of campaign to get me to come back, it's not going to work."

"—was callin' Dad."

"That's what you say. How do I know if that's the truth?"

There was a long silence. "—not lyin,' Sammy."

Sam gripped the phone tightly. "You're going down his road, aren't you? Following his lead in everything. Best friends named Jim, Jack and Jose. It's not enough that you let him turn you into a soldier in his own image, but now you're screwing over your liver, too? Dean, for God's sake—no, for your sake!—grow a pair and be your own man. Stand up to him. I did."

Silence.

"I know you worship the man, but he's no good for you. Let him go do what he needs to do, chase down that demon, hunt things, kill things—"

"—save people, Sammy."

"And kill yourself in the mean time. Dean, please—" Unexpectedly, Sam felt tears well. "Please look at yourself in the mirror. Take a good hard look. Please tell me you still see Dean Winchester in it, not John."

For a long moment Sam heard only Dean's breathing. It sounded rough, uneven.

"Sammy?"

"Yeah. "

"—look, I need t' call Dad. I'm, uh . . . 'm pretty wasted, but gotta tell him what happened so he knows I can't make the hunt in Tuscaloosa."

"You're in Alabama?"

"—Dad is. I'm in . . . hell, I dunno. Georgia, I think. I'll 'member tomorrow."

"Call him tomorrow when you sober up. Not now. Or text him." Sam paused. "No, don't do that. You'd probably just end up texting me." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Are you really going to tell him you can't make the hunt because you're wasted in Georgia?"

"Have to."

"Dad will be really pissed."

"—yeah, well . . ." Dean seemed to be fading. "—cost me my spleen."

Sam's brows rose. "What, you think Dad will rip out your spleen?"

"Nah. They already did that."

And then Sam heard the woman's voice again. "Gotta check your vitals, sugar. But your BP's lookin' pretty good. You need a boost in your pain meds? Doc said it's okay. Here, I'll fix you right up."

Sam abruptly rocketed up off the bed and stood bolt upright in the middle of the room. A chill so pervasive that it tingled even in his scalp ran throughout his body. "Dean—are you in the hospital?"

"—they won't let me out tomorrow, so I gotta call Dad."

"What the hell happened? They took out your spleen?"

"Got bounced. They call it 'blunt force trauma,' jus' like on TV. Doc says you can do fine 'thout a spleen, though."

Sam was horrified. "You said you were drunk!"

Dean made a sound something like a half-swallowed laugh. "Sammy, Sammy . . . _you_ said I was drunk. Nuh. Jus' flyin' frien'ly skies of Morphine Airways. Got a hot stewardess, even." He paused. "Nurse." When he spoke again, it was obvious the increased painkiller was taking effect. "—maybe . . . maybe I'll call him t'morrow . . ."

Sam could barely speak. "Yeah."

"—Sammy—sorry I called you. Don' even know what time it is. —was callin' Dad. I'll move your name on the list, won' happen again."

"Dean—"

'—night, Sammy."

When Dean was gone, Sam stood in the middle of a very dark room. He felt the slow build, the burn of an anger so strong he trembled with it. He stared at the display, then called the number.

He got voicemail. "Dad, you son of a bitch, you listen to me. Your oldest son is lying in a hospital somewhere in Georgia where they took his spleen out today. And all he can think about is calling you to say they won't let him out in time to meet you in Tuscaloosa. So don't expect him, Dad. He lost a body part today." The rage made it nearly impossible to speak. "I can't do this . . . I can't do this any more. I can't spend half my time worried about whether Dean's going to survive another day because of your personal crusade, because he's trying so hard to be just like you that he's putting himself in harm's way. I can't do this! I can't watch you ruin his life the way you ruined your own. I won't. I—"

But the end message timer beeped.

Sam stared at the phone. Desolation swept in. He sat down on the end of his bed, tossed his phone aside, leaned down and put his head in his hands with elbows propped on his knees.

Tears made it difficult to speak. "I just can't do this any more."

###

Dean tried to focus on the phone display. Yeah, it was easy to get 'Dad' and 'Sam' confused, if you were really drunk, or high on morphine, and couldn't see clearly. Three letters, one name after the other. He needed to change that. But big fingers, small print, wonky vision.

The nurse came in. "Just hanging a new bag of fluids," she said. "You doin' okay, sugar?"

"Can you . . . " He blinked hard, tried to retrieve his brain. "Can you do a favor?"

"What do you need?"

"You know how to work this kind of phone?"

"I have one just like it."

"Can you move a name for me on the list?"

"Sure." When she was done hanging the new bag, she took the phone from him, went into Settings. "What name am I moving, and where would you like it?"

"'Sam,'" he said. "Right under 'Dad.'" Can you jus' drop it down a couple of slots?"

"Of course."

He closed one eye, tried to focus on her.

And then he rethought.

_Writing's on the wall._

"You know what?" he said. "Never mind moving it. Jus' . . . delete it."

She was clearly startled. "Delete it? Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "I'm sure. "

Because he'd read the writing.

"Okay. It's done." She set the phone on his rolling bedside table. "You get some rest, sugar. Doc'll check on you first thing in the morning."

When she was gone Dean stared blindly into dim lighting. His eyes were hot and dry, and they ached.

At the bus station, twenty months before, Sam had said, 'Thanks for letting me go.'

After a moment he released a long breath of surrender. "Sure, Sammy. I gotcha."

Dean closed his eyes.


	19. Chapter 19

' _This is John Winchester. I can't be reached. If this is an emergency, call my son, Dean, at 866-907-3235. He can help.'_

He scowled at the phone. "This _is_ Dean, you bastard, and I'm the one calling for help. From you!"

He sat in the Impala in the dark on a side street, parked, as always, equidistant from street lights to keep the gleaming expanse of classic muscle car as low-key as possible. When you staked out a building, you didn't want to advertise.

He sighed, scrubbed a hand over the crown of his head and ruffled short-cropped hair, dialed yet again.

Same message. He left a new one.

"Dad, if you get this—I finished the job in New Orleans. What's up next? No call, no coordinates . . . where the hell are you? Call me back."

He leaned forward, twisted his torso one direction, then back the other, popping a couple of tired vertebrae. Next he rolled his head, shrugged repeatedly, trying to loosen up.

Finally he climbed out of the car, stood next to the open door a moment, then shut it and rested his butt against steel, crossing his booted ankles casually as he tucked hands into coat pockets. Nodded into the night.

One by one families had packed up the kids and themselves for the night and turned off the house lights, except for the glowing porch lights up and down the street; maybe one left on in hallways, or in kitchens. He heard a couple of distant barks, but nothing alarming, just dogs talking. It was a rare car that drove down the street this late.

It was ridiculous, but he did it anyway: called the number yet again. Waited for the beep. "Dad. I'm about to do something really stupid, or really smart. How about you give me a little advice on which you'd prefer?"

Silence. He let the line run until the end message beep sounded.

Memory remained clear. So did the voice. He heard it as if John Winchester stood right next to him.

'Look, Dean, life is going to be different now. It's just you, me, and Sammy. But your job is the same: look after your brother no matter what. You will always be the big brother, and he will always be the youngest. When I'm on hunting trips and I can't have you with me, you'll be in charge of Sammy, okay? You gotta make sure he's okay.'

Dad was on a hunting trip.

'But your job is the same: look after your brother no matter what. '

Sammy was long gone. Almost four years. There'd been no contact for two.

'—you'll be in charge of Sammy, okay? You gotta make sure he's okay.'

Dean looked at the phone that didn't ring.

'We gotta look after him, you and me. And when I'm not here, I know I can trust you to take care of him.'

Big brother had done a piss-poor job of it, hadn't he?

'I need to keep my eye on him. Need to keep him safe. Keep all of us safe.'

And Dad had done a piss-poor job of that.

He gazed up at the big block of townhouses. Smiled a little as he felt the thump in his gut of anticipation. He tucked the phone away into a pocket, strolled across the street to the designated porch, reached up to tap the exterior light bulb out of alignment just enough that it flipped off.

Too easy.

Dean knelt, used the picks, had the door open immediately

Too freakin' easy.

He rose, glanced briefly over his shoulder into the street, saw no one. Then he eased open the door and hesitated a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness indoors.

He grinned, rolled his shoulders and head again, let the anticipation build.

He stepped across the threshold, closed the door silently. Then he walked close to the table he'd noted before, purposely bumped it, didn't even try to keep the books from sliding off and thumping to the ground.

_Okay, Sammy, let's see what you remember. Bring it on, kid. We've got work to do._

And Sam, arriving in very short order from out of the dark, brought it on in a wild flurry of blocks and snatches, of locked arms and legs.

But Dean got him down, pinned all that big long body flat on its back. "Whoa. Easy, tiger."

The shock in Sam's voice was obvious. "Dean?"

And Dean laughed as the joy and relief rose up clear to the sky and broke over him like a wave.

_Yeah, Sammy. I gotcha._


End file.
